


Close to Home

by firefallvaruna



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Canon Compliant, Crash Landing, Gen, Minor Injuries, Missing Persons, Mystery, No Romance, No Sex, No Slash, No Smut, No Spoilers, POV Hunk (Voltron), Post-Season/Series 02, Rescue Missions, Serious Injuries, Survival, Suspense, Thriller
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-22
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-01-03 22:42:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12156288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firefallvaruna/pseuds/firefallvaruna
Summary: When Hunk and the other paladins respond to a distress call from a remote planet, they find themselves in a race to find four missing cadets. However, sometimes some missions hit just a little too close to home.





	1. Chapter 1

It all started with a distress beacon.

The Castle let loose a long, strangled tone and then fell silent. The silence stretched on just long enough for its inhabitants to drift back towards sleep.

It returned just long enough for the alert system to activate once again. And again, silence.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.” Hunk groaned after that second alert, half awake, pulling his pillow over his head.

Just a few hours ago, they’d liberated another planet from the Galra. It’d been a tough battle; but, as weird as it seemed to admit it, it was nothing they couldn’t handle. This time, the Galra had tried disrupting their systems. It was desperate and it actually worked, but Pidge, Coran, and Allura had a workaround pretty quickly.

It seemed as though they had all only just calmed down enough to sleep. The Castle-ship’s systems had been rebooted, flushed, and repaired. He had been about falling asleep on his feet when he finally gave up and went to bed. No one had protested, so Hunk assumed all was well. He’d finish his part of the repairs in the morning.

The Castle’s communication system didn’t usually click or crackle like those on Earth, but it was a subtle muffling of sound that would sometimes telegraph an alert. It was doing that now. Hunk held his breath and waited.

Nothing happened; normal sounds resumed. Hunk relaxed, taking a deep breath and letting it out again. He rolled to face the wall and felt himself drift towards sleep.

No sooner than he did that, then the alert reactivated, this time lasting for several moments before cutting off as abruptly as it had the previous times.

Hunk groaned again. It had to be a glitch in the system. Reboots or whatever aside, there apparently was something still messed up. He supposed it was like bubbles in a fluid system: it would take a while for them to work themselves out.

He was almost back to sleep again when another strangled tone woke him back up. His body hated even the thought of leaving his bed; and, if he got up, his stomach would soon demand food. By the time he found something to quiet it, he’d be wide awake. It would be easier just to let someone else handle it.

His brain rebelled at that particular thought: _What if it was someone like Shay and her family?_

Hunk tossed back his blanket and rolled out of bed with yet another groan. Worst case, Pidge or Coran would announce it was a glitch. He’d go get a midnight snack to make his stomach shut up and go back to bed. Worse worst case, it wouldn’t be a glitch, he’d grab a quick breakfast and he’d be on his way to his lion. Worst-worst case, he’d be on his way to his lion without breakfast.

He wasn’t surprised to find Coran and Pidge already on the bridge. They were staring at a point on the map indicated by a faded red distress beacon. A colored overlay extended far beyond the faded indicator, covering almost an entire system.

“Scanners don’t show anything at those coordinates,” Coran was saying. He typed a few commands into his control panel, the map zoomed out and back in. No ships, no asteroids, nothing but open space. “Though the Aclori star system is a relatively young system, so it could be interference. Pidge, are you getting anything?”

Pidge was known for sleeping wherever she had been working. She simply nodded off and resumed her work when she woke up. Lance often joked that Green must have told her to move in for all the times she slept with her lion rather than the hurricane aftermath that was her quarters. Tonight, that must have been in her station on the bridge.  She’d been sitting there when he went to bed, sifting through endless lines of error codes to determine if any of the systems needed additional work.

At the moment, she had pulled up each coordinate the beacon had seemed to originate. Hunk leaned over her shoulder to read. Granted, this was more Pidge’s thing than his, but those coordinates looked pretty useless. She pushed her glasses up her nose, “Unless the beacon lasts longer, we won’t be able to pinpoint an exact location.”

The doors sighed open. Hunk glanced up as Keith trudged in, barefoot, more asleep than awake. He sank into his seat and rested his head on a lightly closed hand. Keith had been out searching for Shiro again, just like he’d done every night since that last fight against Zarkon. Hunk knew the other paladin was only here to make sure that distress beacon wasn’t actually Shiro.

“Coran, are you sure this isn’t just another glitch?” Pidge asked.

Coran twirled his mustache thoughtfully and pulled up a screen on his panel, “System status shows no errors in the communications system; the transceiver is clear; navigation clear…”

“Unless it’s not on our end.” Hunk blurted out. He shrugged as they looked at him, “I mean, if they crashed… maybe it screwed up their beacon? Maybe they’re trying to fix it? I dunno…”

Pidge seemed to consider that a moment, as she always did, “That would explain why it’s doing that.”

“Though there isn’t much we can do in the meantime, unfortunately.” Coran yawned, “I think I’m going to retire or I won’t be of much use later.”

“I’ll stay up,” Pidge offered, looking up with her usual half smile. “You guys go back to bed.”

“I’ll stay up too, keep Pidge company.” His stomach rumbled as though reminding him, “Just gotta get something to eat first.”

And with that, it was decided. Leaving the bridge in Pidge’s capable hands, they began making their way back to the Castle-ship’s living area.

Keith was asleep on his feet, not that he was the most talkative guy under normal circumstances. Eyes half closed, his gaze vacant, only moving because he was determined to get to his bed. Ever since Shiro vanished, he was either raging or silent. Hunk wasn’t even sure if Keith actually slept anymore and didn’t just eventually faint from exhaustion.

Coran shot him concerned look and Hunk shrugged in response. Keith had always been temperamental, but his temper had a hair-trigger these days. The days where Hunk had been able to get him laughing were long gone.

They had no idea what happened to Shiro. All they had were theories and speculation based on what they knew about the Black Lion. And that wasn’t much. The lion itself was still lifelessly slumped in its bay, apparently completely without power.

There wasn’t much they could do.

As he arrived in the galley, the alarm gave another strangled tone. Hunk hoped whoever was on the other end was okay. Each planet they helped seemed to be in worse shape than the last.

Hunk had thought Shay’s people had been in rough shape, but they were actually better off than some of the people they’d helped. Entire families living in bunkers and ditches; homes reduced to piles of rubble, their occupants living pits dug into the dirt beneath the debris. Sickness from tainted water; visible ribs and vertebra from lack of food. No one should have to live like that.

The conquered planets were either thriving or destitute without much between those extremes. Either the commander in charge of a given sector was really good at his or her job or really awful. The only range seemed to be in how awful.

“Hunk!” Pidge yelped over the intercom, “I might have something!”

Hunk whimpered, having not even gotten a bowl yet much less a chance to fill it. By the time he got back to the bridge, the distress beacon was going off again, this time indicating a section of the Aclori star system. It could be originating from one of two planets.

Pidge tapped a few buttons on her panel to open a hailing frequency and took a breath. Instead, a loud, shrill screech of feedback filled the bridge. Static crackled and the tone fluctuated between shrill and a deep, bass rumble.

Another electronic wail, static, and then a quavering, distorted voice, “…Zulu-Six-Two-Echo...”

Pidge hurriedly pressed another set of buttons, “Attention unidentified craft: This is the Castle of Lions, are you in need of assistance? Over.”

The distorted signal screeched once again, painfully shrill. Distortion mangled whatever the other person was saying, clearing only long enough for a single word to slip between the bands of static: “Crash.”

“Unidentified craft, can you repeat? We’re getting a lot of distortion. Over.”

The person on the other end took an audibly deep breath that the distortion made into an oscillating warble, “This is Zora Saito aboard the Kestellian Royal Academy of Science transport ship, _Archer Zulu-Six-Two-Echo_. We were,” the rest of the person’s words were drowned out by a crackle of static and another shriek of feedback. It cleared, just enough for, “crash landed…” to be plainly heard.

“ _Archer_ , repeat? Hello?” Pidge exclaimed. The person on the other end seemed to be repeating, but the distortion was only getting worse. Only brief syllables were making it through.

More feedback, more static. Another painful electronic scream followed by an even more agonizing choked sob. They repeated dutifully, but between waves, they could hear that the person on the other end, Zora, was nearing panic.

“Hey, can you repeat? Are there any injuries?” Hunk echoed, not exactly calm anymore himself.

A staticky trill followed by a distorted, “casualties.”

“ _Archer_ , can you send us your location? Over.” Pidge said slowly, carefully emphasizing each word as she spoke.

Zora said something that at least sounded like they received the message, it ended with the right sound, at any rate. What else they might have said, he couldn’t be sure.

Hunk held his breath as the ship registered an incoming packet. Fifteen percent; thirty; sixty; and then it hung at eighty-one percent. The Altean symbol for an error flashed on the screen. He glanced up at the main viewport, “We got it, but it was corrupted. Try again?”

“Copy,” Zora said again, momentarily clear. Clear enough, they could hear them faintly whispering “come on” over and over. And then a whimper, “No, no, no-no. No…”

“Stay calm and try again,” Pidge said evenly.

“Something keeps,” Zora said before static drowned out their next words. It cleared just long enough for a sentence to finish with, “a short somewhere.”

“I find com systems respond well to corporal punishment,” Hunk chuckled weakly at his own joke. He half expected Pidge to turn around to glare at him, but she was focused on her own monitor.

Zora must have heard it. There was a loud bang of metal on metal and the static momentarily cleared.

“Transmitting…” The signal was so clear, they could hear the tremble in Zora’s voice. The pops, crackles, and metallic groans from a dying ship, a distant bark and hiss of a fire suppressor, and much closer someone was moaning weakly. “Going to lose reserve power soon…”

Suddenly cold, his mouth dry, Hunk realized this was a real crash. A real ship; with real people. The person on the mic, Zora, sounded young. His age, maybe younger. Sounded… not unlike his friends. Not unlike his classmates at the Garrison. A shiver of icy electricity ran up his spine even as the incoming packet registered, downloaded, and the coordinates automatically loaded into the navigation system.

“Planet Golf-Eight-Eight-One-Sierra of the Aclori system. Is this correct? Over.” Pidge’s finger hovered over the intercom button.

Zora’s “affirmative” popped and warbled amidst the staticky squeal.

Hunk tapped the matching button on his own console, “Allura, Coran – we have coordinates to that distress call! Can someone Altean get up here to move the ship?”

“We’re coming to assist you, do you copy?” There was a reason Pidge was a com-spec and it was showing. How was she keeping her voice so even?

Feedback and then the tone dipped low, barely audible. They could briefly hear Zora’s voice but not what they said.

“It’ll be okay, Zora,” Pidge said quickly. Hunk hoped his voice had been as calm and even as Pidge’s as she added, “Sit tight, we’re coming.”

The distress beacon flickered out.

 

* * *

 

Within moments of launching from the castle, Hunk decided the Aclori system was one of those freakishly scary systems.

Several planets were barely formed into something that could be considered a planet. They were really just hot, dense balls of molten rock that hadn’t cooled yet. Another planet looked more like a random metallic storm that just happened to form into a neat ball. Another was a cool donut shape. It even looked like it had an awesome mirror glaze, except the Yellow Lion’s sensors warned him those pretty colors suggested it had a highly toxic atmosphere. 

And finally, planet G881S. Previous surveys had found it to be just a plain, hot, lifeless, round rock of a planet. Gravity just slightly more than Earth, reasonably breathable atmosphere, and water – it just wasn’t all that interesting beyond that.

Hunk didn’t know much about how surveys were conducted out in space, but whoever did it either didn’t enter the designation code correctly or they were hiding something.

For a plain, lifeless rock, it was pretty _green_. As they descended into the atmosphere, it was clearly vegetation. In fact, all along the coasts and deep into the interior was just thick, lush jungle. An entire subcontinent was solid green, save for one jagged, yellow tooth of a mountain sticking above the treetops.

“Uh... Pidge, are you sure we’re in the right place?” Lance sounded as confused as he felt, “Because this definitely isn’t a desert planet.”

“These are the coordinates Zora sent,” Pidge stated a little defensively as the Green Lion swooped low and then paused. “The crash site should be a bit west.”

Within moments, they found themselves over a glaringly white hardpan. Thick, white deposits as far as the eye could see, all glittering in the sun. The Yellow Lion’s sensors informed him it was blisteringly hot too. 

Hunk looked up just in time to see a brown furrow marring the glittering surface. He pulled his lion around first in one direction and then the other. There was jagged rock not far below the surface. It would have been like landing the ship on a washboard.

“Aw, man.” Hunk whispered, almost sick from even imagining the landing. Bits and pieces of ship littered the furrow. Thermal tiles, metal scraps, the occasional cable.

“What… happened here?” Keith breathed.

They fell silent as they drifted down the scar in their lions. Hunk could picture how the ship crashed from the debris pattern. The ship had bounced a few times. Spun. Jumped a ridge. A wing here; a sizable chunk of fuselage there.

And then, there was _Archer Z62-E_. Or what remained of it. It resembled more a dead animal, picked clean by scavengers. Tattered wires and scraps of insulation swayed in the scant breeze. The rocks were littered with papers, supplies, and equipment. The entire undercarriage was blackened and charred, the panels melted together from impact and fire. Something had torn a large gash in the side of the ship, marring a stylized logo of a falcon in flight.

There was no sign of anyone.

“Zora, are you there?” Pidge broadcast from her lion.

Silence.

“Zora?”

Hunk tapped a few buttons to check for lifeforms. The scan started and quickly came up negative. He said in dismay, “Guys, I’m not showing any signs of life.”

“They left a door open. Let’s set down and check it out.” Lance’s voice wasn’t usually that soft.

The lions stirred up a cloud of white mineral dust as they set down. Visibility dropped to near nothing.

“Please-oh-please, let this just be salt,” Hunk muttered to himself as he prepared to step out. However, as soon as he stepped out into the hot air, his suit informed him the air contained superfine particles of various chemical compounds including alkanes and nitrate salts.

A warning flashed on his visor, alerting him to the presence of stionium dust – a toxic heavy metal – and casoxene. Both had the _really_ bad habit of bonding with other unstable compounds, making them even more unstable than they already were. They might as well be in a field of xanthorium. “Whoa, yeah… Pretty much everything in these salt flats could explode.”

“Well, this is fun,” Lance remarked sarcastically. His bayard flashed into his hands and then flashed again into his rifle.

“Keep your guard up,” Keith replied. “I’m going to scout along the perimeter.”

“Or maybe we should stick together,” Pidge said, tearing her gaze from the projected interface from her gauntlet to glare sidelong at him.

“I totally agree.” Hunk said quickly. As if she needed to say it: This was super creepy. “Is it just me, or are you guys getting serious _Alien_ vibes here? I mean, this planet is super hostile and toxic and maybe we should just hurry up and find Zora and her friends and leave…” 

Keith, as usual, ignored them and walked away.

“I bet twenty-five cents and some pocket lint he turned his radio off again.” Lance joked. It probably wasn’t true, he hadn’t turned his radio off since that one time, but there was always the chance.

Truth be told, he probably wanted to be alone in the desert. Keith seemed to be pushing them away or deliberately isolating himself. They were all hurting from losing Shiro, but Keith… they were losing him too. Hunk had no idea how to fix that. Giving him space seemed to be the best – and only – option.

“Okay.” Pidge said firmly after a notable sigh, “If their training was anything like ours, they should know to stay inside the ship and wait for help.”

He looked up the ship’s ramp and into the black void that waited for them.

Inside. In the dark. Where anything could be waiting for them. Another icy shiver ran up his back. Pidge was about to say they needed to go inside a ship with no power, maybe dead bodies…

He was an engineer and mechanic – not a soldier. At least, he never intended to be. It was on the tip of his tongue to volunteer to check out the exterior of the ship, see what he could learn from the mechanicals. The memory of Zora’s panic-stricken voice over the com stopped him. Hunk hadn’t been able to tell much about Zora from the brief exchange over the com, but all he could picture was someone like Shay.

Hunk gulped and followed them inside. Some kind of invisible field blocked the dust from the airlock. The dust formed drifts in the corners and scraped off his shoulders by something unseen. What could only be a portable generator sat quietly just inside, wires snaking from the port on the side to an open access panel. It looked pretty intuitive.

Hunk lightly bumped a kick-switch with his toes and it hummed to life.

The exterior airlock doors slid shut and cycled. Dust from the crevices of their suits filled the air in a cloud almost as thick as when they’d landed before being sucked into the air scrubbers. His helmet showed the air quality rapidly improving. Fifty… seventy-five… one-hundred…

The interior doors swished open.

After a short hallway, they came into what was probably the passenger area. Neat rows of comfortable, upholstered seats in color-blocked grey, white, and blue. They searched row by row, looking for anything that might give them an idea of what happened.

Motes of dust were all that greeted the lights from their gauntlets. 

“I’ve got a duffle bag here,” Lance said from the other side of the room. He lifted the bag onto a seat and over the mic, Hunk could hear the zipper.

He took a deep breath, held it a moment, and let it back out. He began making his way down the next row.

Something squished under his boot. Soft. Squishy. Slippery. Hunk leaped back, certain it was something he didn’t want to see! A body. Or a hand. Or a piece of someone! He yelped, “I knew this was a bad idea!”

It was…

A donut. At least it had started out life that way; before he stepped on it. With white frosting, rainbow sprinkles, and some kind of fruity, purple filling.

“Ugh, Hunk…” Lance groaned, “Give me a heart attack, why don’t you?”

“My bad,” Hunk said with a relieved laugh. An upside-down pink box was under one of the seats. Donuts were scattered across the floor. He desperately wished he could try them. Alas, even though the air was clear, his helmet still wasn’t going to let him open it to find out. He paused to honor the ruined pastries with a moment of silence.

A half-eaten donut stuck to a napkin was further down the row. A bottle of some kind of drink was in a cup holder a few seats beyond that. The arms were flipped up, as though whoever sat there had taken up a bunch of seats.

Another duffle bag, exactly like the one Lance found, rested on a seat. Clothes had been removed from it, strewn about. Tee-shirts with some kind of alien writing, some bearing unfamiliar cartoon characters. Some had been torn up.

“I found another,” Pidge said from across the room. “Comic books and some kind of chips too.”

“I think whoever was in here was our age,” Lance said grimly. He was holding something that looked like it might be a photo. They made their way back to the center aisle to take a look.

Aside from the fact they were all aliens, it might have been a photo of four cadets from Earth. The uniforms were gray, white, and blue rather than orange, but they were still school uniforms. One of the kids, a redheaded guy with skin like pale caramel, might have passed for human if not for the faint markings on his face. Another, a tanned girl with dark purple-blue hair and almost Asian features might have passed if no one looked too closely. The final two were either Galra or some other blue- or purple-skinned race; one with pale hair, the other with dark hair and glasses. All smiling, proud, and happy.

“Guys,” Keith said over the mic. There was a tone to his voice he hadn’t heard before. Unexpectedly vulnerable, somber, maybe even scared. “I think you should see this.”

The feed from Keith’s helmet appeared. He was outside some distance from the crash, up a steep embankment, and looking back at the ship. He panned back around. Three long mounds of rocks came into view. Piled high and almost as long as he was tall…

Hunk felt his stomach fall and his heart rose into his throat.

They were looking at makeshift graves.


	2. Chapter 2

“Nope, no. No-no. I am not going in there.” Hunk said emphatically. A dried, bloody handprint on the bulkhead had been enough to convince him he wanted nothing to do with the cockpit or the command center of the ship. He was going to stay in the passenger area of the ship where there was no blood or anything scary and gross.

“Fine.” Lance said with an audible smirk, “Not like there’s four cadets our age missing or anything. It’s cool. Pidge and I will be out in a minute.”

The airlock beeped, cycled, and the doors swept open. There was power there, at least. Pidge and Lance stepped inside and the doors shut behind them.

Hunk looked around the passenger compartment. It was too quiet and too dark with just his lights.

Ugh, Lance knew him too well. Cold prickled the back of his neck. The button had been pressed. No, stomped. Triggered; hardcore. Hunk knew that’s all it was, but it still made the passenger compartment seem really ominous, really quick. Even the darkened doorway he knew led to a restroom suddenly felt like it could be hiding something.

He could go outside and join Keith in his aerial sweep. But that would require him to find his way out of the ship. Alone. In the dark. It was an easy decision: He hurried through the airlock after Pidge and Lance. 

The command center was in far worse shape than the passenger compartment. A huge hole in the fuselage let in a flood of blazing, dusty sunlight. The white powder from outside was already starting to form small drifts. Pidge disappeared into a side room with Lance not far behind.

Hunk’s boot caught on a piece of debris. He dropped his bayard, arms pin-wheeling as he fought to maintain his footing.

“I think this is the com system,” Pidge said from inside. There was a long pause. “It’s pretty badly damaged.”

“Someone pulled some major MacGuyvers to get that to work,” Lance said reverently. He stepped back and looked around, his expression severe, “I’m going to sweep the rest of the area.”

Hunk paused to let him pass and then leaned into the room. It was tight, really just a small service access than a true “room.” He wasn’t sure he’d even fit in there. Pidge was kneeling in front of an open panel and examining the tangle of wires snaking out of it.

Zora must have scoured the entire ship to find improvised ways to fix the communications systems enough to get a distress call out. Hunk was fairly sure he was even looking at a few sets of jumper cables. There were globs of cooled solder shimmering on the edge of the panel, a discarded tub of what could only be flux, and burnt wires. There were some wadded-up pieces of foil; maybe from one of their snacks? He couldn’t imagine trying to eat out here, though. A rubbery, pink mass that was holding a capacitor in place might be bubble gum or epoxy putty – it was hard to tell the difference sometimes.

“It would have taken some serious guts to try soldering with all the flammable stuff in the air,” Hunk said with almost the same level of reverence as Lance used earlier. The level of ingenuity was nothing short of impressive.

“I think “desperate” is probably more like it,” Lance said dourly over the radio.

“Ooh!” Pidge made a happy noise and started hurriedly disconnecting wires and removing parts. She tossed them aside, digging for something in the far back. 

“You find a flight data recorder or something?” Hunk asked.

“Well, it’s bright red, yellow label, black writing.” She reached in as far as she could. “Abductive reasoning says…”

“If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck... then it probably is a duck.” Hunk replied, completing the thought.

Pidge grunted and from the inside of the panel, something clicked and clicked again. She pulled her arm out, bringing with it the device she’d spotted. Whatever it was, it was about the size of a small shoe box and sounded heavy. 

With a grimace, she took the bright red box with both hands. It was heavier than she expected and she nearly dropped it. Her face screwed up in strain, Pidge waddled the few steps needed to reach him.

Hunk hurriedly accepted it from her before she really did drop it. He tested the weight, “Yeah, this feels like it’s got a lot of extra shielding. I bet you anything this is a flight data recorder.”

“Let’s get that back to the ship and see if we can get any good data from it,” Pidge said, standing up and stretching her back.

“Paladins: Do you copy?” Allura asked through a crackle of interference.

“We copy, Allura. What’s up?” Lance responded as he emerged from the cockpit.

“We’re picking up some kind of atmospheric disturbance,” She said urgently. “We’re not sure what it is, but at the current rate energy emissions will quickly reach unsafe levels. Please hurry.” 

“We’ll be out in a few doboshes, Allura,” Pidge replied. 

“Like, a storm?” Hunk asked, slightly worried. “Like with acid? Or fire? Or creepy, spider-like creatures?”

“Whoa,” Keith exclaimed over the radio, his voice cracking. “I have a visual. Allura’s right: that’s more than a storm. Red’s sensors are picking up all kinds of wild energy.” Over the mic they could hear thunder a few ticks before they heard it faintly inside the ship.

“Yeah,” Hunk breathed. “With all this flammable dust that is not high on my to-do list.”

“Big fat ditto from me, big guy,” Lance said. He was holding a lanyard and identification badge in his hand. He held it out for them to see, “I found it in the cockpit.”

Hunk couldn’t read the alien writing, but the face of the alien girl smiled back at him.

 

* * *

 

Hunk wasn’t much of a storm-watcher.

However, from the safety of the Castle-ship’s bridge, he had to admit it was fascinating watching some of the weirdest parts of physics and chemistry playing out in the planet’s atmosphere. Discharges of various colors flashed and flared; and, jets of blood red plasma erupted into the upper atmosphere to lap at the edge of space. Vibrant purple emissions rose nearly as high and then bloomed like flowers. Then there was the lightning. A planet like this couldn’t have normal lightning, of course. It had to be freakish, unnatural colors, shimmering along the edges of the clouds.

If he wasn’t painfully aware there were people down there, somewhere, he’d be tempted to start running analyses. The periodic table would probably explode all over again from the results.

He glanced back down at his panel. They’d left sensors on board the ship, set them to sound an alert if anyone boarded, and closed the doors. They’d left additional generators, a handheld communicator, and a note to let them know they were in orbit. No one had returned, but the radiation levels inside were at safe levels.

“The shielding in the passenger compartment is holding against the storm,” Hunk announced. “I don’t get it. It was structurally sound; tons of extra shielding, thermal protection, you name it – they’d reinforced it. If they’d kept the doors closed and stayed in that area of the ship, they would have been fine.”

“Why did they leave then?” Keith asked. “It sounds like they had plenty of supplies.”

“And they had a generator hooked up to life support,” Hunk added. “It was switched off, but it was there.”

“Maybe we can find clues on the flight data recorder,” Pidge said. The box opened fairly easily once they got it to Coran and Pidge was able to hook it up to the system for analysis just as easily.

“If anything, Kestellian ship logs are always quite thorough,” Coran said as he checked Pidge’s progress. “Once you can get past their encryption, that is.”

Pidge had been working for a while on that encryption. In fact, she’d barely moved since they’d made it back from the planet several hours ago. All their work on Galra encryption was coming in handy; the program she’d written to brute-force her way into Galra systems was hammering away. Pidge was actively making adjustments in command line and parsing the error results for the slightest clues that she was headed in the right direction.

While Hunk was pretty good at that side of things too, Pidge made it a work of art.

Lance’s expression was severe as he sorted through the contents of the duffel bags they found. The civilian clothes wouldn’t have looked that out-of-place on Earth. Hunk guessed they were guys from the size and cut, but he was a little leery of making too many assumptions about new alien species.

“I’m surprised to see Kestellians out this far,” Allura swept her hands to bring up a map. “They don’t usually stray far from their sector.”

The map zoomed in to an open star cluster and then in further to reveal numerous planetary systems. “They were a long, long way from home,” she added.

“So… what were they doing out this far?” Keith asked.

“I’m not sure,” Allura lowered her gaze to the floor and lifted a hand to her lips like she always did when she was thinking. “They have the tendency to be… strongly isolationist. It was always a challenge for my father to open any kind of dialogue with them. Coran?”

He was thoughtfully twirling his mustache. After several long moments, he finally said, “At least in our time, they maintained several forward operating bases. Let’s see…”

Coran gestured on the map and it zoomed in further, bringing a brilliant blue object into view. It wasn’t a star and definitely wasn’t a planet. It was too defined to be a nebula. It was really just a small, blue blob in empty space. A pretty cerulean blue, like the sky above the Rocky Mountains, but nothing really interesting otherwise. “That might not look like much, but it’s actually a rather nasty anomaly Kestellians call the _oci_. It looks to be in a dormant phase right now.”

He hit a few buttons and a picture appeared on the monitors. It was huge and scary. Like a cluster of whirlpools or tornados in space, but not any of the normal causes for those phenomena. Weird balls or spheres of perfect blackness made almost a fractal pattern around the edges of the swirling energy. They were too crisp, even, and perfectly, velvety black against the brightness of the surrounding anomaly. There weren’t even the pin-pricks of distant stars within them. Maybe some kind of debris? Definitely not black holes…

“Oh yeah,” Hunk exchanged an awe-inspired glance with Pidge. “That’s all kinds of cool and terrifying…”

“No kidding,” Pidge breathed.

“Looks kind of like the _Eye of Sauron_ ,” Lance observed, pushing the final duffel bag away from him with his foot. “Just blue weirdness instead of – you know – fire and stuff…”

Coran stared at him a moment in confusion before shaking himself, “Kestellian scientists found when it’s in an active phase, odd nebulas can form elsewhere with the identical energy signature.”

He gestured once more and the map refocused on the current sector and spun to a nebula in shades of blue that formed a skull-like shape, “They may have been going to Death’s Head Station, in the nebula of the same name.” The map combined with their long-range scanners and zoomed in the rest of the way to show a wheel-like station.

“Wouldn’t the Galra, I dunno, have taken it over by now?” Lance asked from his seat.

“The nebula doesn’t really offer any tactical advantage. It’s too far from any major targets,” Coran turned away to again zoom the map out. According to Pidge’s Galra finder, the nearest outposts were days away at best. “Nebulas associated with the _oci_ are treacherous, to say the least. Plus, I’m sure they have one of their elite Wraith fleets stationed there to be sure. Even a small Wraith squadron can ruin your day.” 

“Fun times,” Lance said sarcastically.

A set of cheery beeps sounded from Pidge’s station and she exclaimed, “Finally! We’re in.”

Pidge pressed several buttons and data from the recorder appeared on the monitors, “Okay, so we have the flight plan, manifests, ships logs, and crash logs.”

“Bit less than I was expecting, but it’s a start,” Coran sounded puzzled. He rested a hand on his station and took a half step backward.

“It looks like Coran was right,” Pidge said after a moment. “They were going to Death’s Head station. They stopped at Ghost Walker Point first to drop off personnel and supplies and then set a course for the station.”

“Nice names,” Keith said sarcastically. “Sounds like they’re really into the whole death thing. Pidge, any idea of why they crashed?”

“Let’s see,” Pidge typed several things into her panel. And then again. There was a long pause, “That’s strange.”

“What is it?” Hunk asked.

“It looks like multiple systems failures,” Pidge’s eyebrows knitted together and she leaned forward. She pressed a button and a long list of failure and error messages appeared on the monitors. 

Hunk stared at the list, not quite comprehending what he was seeing. Fatal errors in communications, navigation, propulsion, instrumentation, controls, guidance, power generation and distribution. The list continued for some time. While he’d found mechanical issues including burnt-out motors and electricals, he’d assumed they were from the crash. He shook his head and gestured at the monitors, “Wait, wait, wait! What? Did everything fail? That… shouldn’t be possible. Is that possible? I mean, just going off Earth ships here but wouldn’t they have redundant systems in the event something happened?” 

“There must have been an error with the logging system,” Coran looked even more confused now. “I’m not seeing any of the usual crash data.”

“Let’s see who we’re rescuing,” Allura said. “Pidge?”

“Sure thing,” Pidge brought up the crew manifest. “So, we have a three-man flight crew...” The pictures of three human-like Kestellians appeared, all older men. The translations the castle-ship provided for their ranks suggested they were a seasoned crew who had probably completed the route many times before.

“The remains we recovered all match the flight crew,” Coran interjected sadly. “The poor souls likely gave their lives to safely land the ship.”

“Then for the passenger manifest for Death’s Head, we have one instructor and four cadets,” Pidge brought up the pictures. The instructor was another human-like Kestellian, roughly middle-aged, darkly tanned skin, dark hair, and with a bookish look to him. “The instructor is Dr. Sorocan, professor of astrophysics at the academy.”

Pidge expanded the picture of the girl with blue-purple hair, “Zora Saito, the person we spoke to, is a second-deca-phoeb communications cadet.” With the picture zoomed in, she looked even more human than she had before.

“I found her ID badge in the cockpit,” Lance added.

She brought up the two blue-skinned aliens, “Next we have brothers, Maro and Xande Jarvinen.” In better lighting, Hunk was fairly confident they weren’t Galra. While they were bluish-purple, they were also more pinkish than the Galra he’d seen. Plus, they had cool white rings around their irises. Maro, the one on the left, had dark hair and glasses; Xande, the one on the right, had unnaturally yellow hair.

“Levlians!” Allura exclaimed in delight, “I thought Zarkon wiped them out!”

“The Levlians were part of the Coalition before the war began,” Coran explained. “Interesting folks, those Levlians. Their planet was almost entirely water. Oh, it was always quite a challenge landing on one of their floating cities. Missing the landing zone and setting down in the water was practically a rite of passage!”

He sobered and added, “Unfortunately, their planet was among the first worlds Zarkon destroyed.”

“Guessing they’re not so extinct after all,” Hunk said.

“Maro is a second-deca-phoeb mechanical engineering cadet; Xande is a third-deca-phoeb pilot,” Pidge continued.

Finally, Pidge brought up the picture of the redheaded cadet, “Kai Agema, first-deca-phoeb navigation and pilot.” She frowned, “Second attachment to this record… let’s see.”

The picture changed to a dog- or wolf-like creature, colorful and very, _very_ large.

Pidge knit her eyebrows together and flipped back to the main record. The translation provided by the ship simply said the attachment was a second identification photo.

Hunk realized the faint markings on his face matched the black markings on the wolf’s face. The pale caramel of his skin matched the wolf’s facial and throat fur. The copper-red of his hair matched the red on the wolf’s head. The eyes, though, were the same exact eyes. 

Allura and Coran looked puzzled.

“Whoa… is that guy a _werewolf_?!” Lance exclaimed in excitement. He lowered his voice and said dramatically, “Werewolves in space!”

“What is a were… wolf?” Allura asked suspiciously.

“Werewolves are awesome!” Lance exclaimed, leaping to his feet in excitement. “They’re like people, but during the full moon they turn into these awesome wolf creatures.” He hunched his back, bared his teeth, held his curled fingers in front of him, and howled.

Pidge was glaring at Lance, Keith was pressing his hand to his face, but all Hunk could think of is how cool it was that werewolves were actually real. Real and not scary at all. “Cool! Hey, does anyone else think it looks like the space-wolf is smiling for the camera?”

Allura looked like her headache was back, but after a moment, she said, “Let’s try the logs.”

Pidge quickly pulled up the ship’s logs, “So the ships logs were being made twice a quintant until roughly two quintants ago. They missed the evening log, and then only two entries in the last thirty varga.” She selected that first entry.

“Ship’s log,” A guy’s voice filled the bridge. “Um. This is Maro Jarvinen. Several varga ago, we crash-landed on Planet Golf-Eight-Eight-One-Sierra of the Aclori system.”

“It’s taken Zora and I that long to get non-spinning reserves up and running,” Maro continued. “Somehow all our backups and reserves were drained – even the isolated com backup is D.O.A. I don’t know how that’s even possible.”

“Captain Dariush and flight crew were – they were – they’d passed away by the time we forced the door open. Professor Sorocan is pretty sick with some kind of infection.”

“I guess we get to find out if we were all paying attention in class,” He made a nervous laugh. “Com systems are fried. All our systems are fried. Even the mechanicals. I don’t even know how –” Maro paused, his voice breaking like he was about to cry, “– how that could happen.”

“Zora is trying to jury rig the com system with enough power…” The was a noise in the background, “Um? Zora? You okay?” There was a pause and then he said, “I gotta help her.”

And with that, the log abruptly ended.

Pidge selected the second entry.

“Ship’s log,” Zora’s voice was calm, confident. “We are one quintant out from the crash. Oxygen levels good. Supplies good. Maro and I were able to repair life support and shields.”

Hunk glanced at Pidge. This would be like the two of them pulling a miracle out of their butts to save their friends.

“Both are holding,” Zora said. “Air locks and filtration are operational but are critically low on power. Maro is attempting to locate another intact generator in the cargo hold. Conservation mode active. S.O.S ping is active, but not transmitting properly. Repairs to the communications system are slow and still in-progress.”

“Doctor Sorocan’s vitals are steady, though the infection is worsening.”

The recording ended. Everyone was quiet. They still didn’t really have anything. Zora didn’t even sound scared in that recording.

“Well, that was a bust,” Lance said glumly.

“I disagree,” Allura stated. Lance looked over at her in confusion. Without missing a beat, the princess added, “It confirms what we saw previously: all systems malfunctioned at the same time. Most of their power drained. And then there’s the clear mechanical failures Hunk found. However, the absence of other information is probably the best clue we have.”

Pidge was silently resting her interlocked fingers on her chin. After a moment, she said, “I think you’re on to something, Allura.”

Hunk felt another jolt run up his spine as those facts started aligning in his mind. “Wait… you’re not thinking sabotage?”

“I am,” Allura looked severe.

“Wait, but isn’t that a bit overkill to sabotage the entire ship when a single essential system would…” Hunk began, but then something clicked. “Oh. No. Whoever did it sabotaged the main power regulator? Done right… that would send a massive surge through the ship.”

“Done right,” Allura echoed grimly. “And they’d lose _everything_. Even auxiliary and emergency systems.”

Keith jumped to his feet, his body already leaning towards the elevator to his lion, “They could be in danger. We have to get back down there!”

“We can’t,” Allura said loudly. “The disturbance is right on top of the crash site now.”

Hunk looked at the sensor readings to confirm and felt sick. They were getting too much interference to get any readings at all.

“Even if we found them, we couldn’t leave our lions and the storm might kill them if they leave their cover,” Pidge had jumped to her feet too.

“If they’re alive at all,” Hunk said. Someone had to say it. He didn’t want to say it, but they had to consider it. That kind of sabotage probably meant whoever did it had little concern for the passengers.

“Oh man,” Lance whispered and sank heavily into his seat.

Everyone went quiet.

Below, the storm raged on. 

Lance had been sitting quietly, looking defeated. Now, he sat up a bit straighter, “Maybe we could – like – use the Blue Lion’s sonic scan? Then after the storm passes, I dunno – we try those biothermal sensors we used on the Balmera?”

After a moment, Coran said, “It might work.”

“I can try to adjust the sensors to compensate for the interference,” Pidge added. 

Hunk looked down at the storming planet and just felt an overwhelming sense of dread. He had a feeling what they were going to say next: They were going to go down anyway.


	3. Chapter 3

Hunk was pretty sure the Yellow Lion didn’t like the storm any better than he did. Between the interference and all the atmospheric weirdness, his alarms hadn’t stopped going off the entire time.

A fresh band of rain mixed with hail – possibly water rain and ice, possibly some other kind of liquid – lashed his lion. He didn’t want to know what it was, to be honest. The hail was huge and it sounded like the Yellow lion was under heavy artillery fire rather than chunks of ice.

His sensors warbled a warning about a violent wind shear. Hunk had only a moment to brace himself before it shook his lion so hard his teeth rattled.

Hunk groaned as the all-too-familiar feeling of motion sickness started. How he let himself get talked into this, he had no idea. The storm had tossed the Red and Green lions around like rag dolls. Blue and Yellow were doing only a little better, if only for their larger size. Rather than just wait until the storm passed, suddenly, it was all on Lance and him. There really wasn’t much he could do besides guard Lance’s butt. 

Interference was messing with his scanners and had messed up Blue’s sonic scan twice in a row. Lance had to cancel the third scan to take evasive maneuvers.

Now they were flying laps around the area, trying to find a good spot to try for the fourth time.

Pidge and Keith were dropping bio-thermal sensors in the areas not affected by the storm to create a sensor grid. Why couldn’t he be out dropping sensors where it was safe?

Alarms wailed. Brightness filled his viewport. Hunk yanked back on the controls. His lion drew up short and then veered sharply to the side.

Heart pounding, Hunk looked to see what they’d almost hit.

It was some kind of energy discharge. He couldn’t really call it lightning. Lightning didn’t strike and, well, stay striking. Hunk couldn’t tell whether it was originating from the ground or the sky. Either way, it was a huge beam of deadly energy. Where it touched the ground, glowing orbs of plasma bounced away like sparks.

Lance howled over the staticky radio, “Whoo! That was close!”

Hunk had no idea where to look. Where to watch for the next thing trying to kill them. They’d had ball lightning form on the tips of their lions’ noses and then explode, dodged clouds of vapor that were on the verge of becoming plasma, and now an energy discharge that was _still_ going off.

Lance was setting down on a nearby mesa, “Let’s see if this spot will work better.”

There were glowing spots on the mesa. Crystals, he guessed. Hunk whimpered, “Should we really be doing this? I mean, this seems like a really, really bad idea.”

“Relax, Hunk.” Lance was wearing one of his stupid grins, “No danger of going to the principal’s office out here.”

Hunk growled a little. He pulled his lion around, circling the mesa. Those spots were steadily glowing brighter, “What the heck are those glowy things?”

One of the glowing spots exploded, showering his lion with sparks. Hunk yelped, rolling away from the mesa. 

“Lance, we gotta get clear of this thing!” He shouted into the mic.

Lance wasn’t doing anything. Why wasn’t he doing anything? He wasn’t moving his lion and those spots were glowing and what if another discharge happened right under him and he wasn’t doing anything!

“Come on, clear,” Lance muttered over the radio. “Come on.” Then he crowed, “Yes! Initializing sonic scan now!”

Blue’s sonic canon materialized and a concentrated sound wave rippled through the moisture-laden air.

Those spots were definitely crystal outcroppings. They were glowing brighter. Another exploded with molten shards. Lightning arced between the spiky patches.

Lance wasn’t moving, why was the scan taking so long – he needed to move. “Move. Move. Move. Move. Now. Please. Move,” Hunk muttered rapidly to himself, forgetting the mic was open.

“Almost there…” Lance was staring at another monitor. He wasn’t looking, he needed to move and he wasn’t paying attention. 

“Lance!” Hunk screamed, “Move!”

The sonic canon vanished and Lance punched it. Blue’s feet braced and leaped skyward.

The crystals sparked. With a roar, another discharge erupted from the mesa. 

But Lance and Blue were clear.

They were clear.

“You’re okay!” Hunk shouted, feeling relieved. “Oh-em-gee, tell me you got something.”

“I got it,” Lance said. Hunk could hear his grin. “Was there any doubt?”

They climbed steeply, through the arcing clouds and into the upper atmosphere. Then higher still until the storm lay safely below them.

“Oh, those energy pillars were what created the purple energy-flower-things,” Hunk observed out loud. They’d seemed pretty before he’d had to dodge them. Well, they still were pretty if you were into high-energy chrysanthemums of death. 

“All sensors delivered,” Pidge said over the crackling radio. Hunk could see the Red and Green lions in the distance, headed for them. “Lance?” 

“Sonic scan completed,” Lance replied from his lion. “Uploading the data now.”

The map filled in almost instantly. Hunk frowned as he studied it.

Planet G881S was full of surprises. The sonic scan showed the entire planet was riddled with lava tubes, caverns, and slot canyons – some going shockingly deep. Some might be penetrating the mantle or at least getting close. Many of the lava tubes and cavern systems were arranged in a fractal pattern.

“You know, this kind of reminds me of Lichtenberg figures,” Hunk said more to Pidge than anyone else. 

“Yeah,” Pidge replied after a moment through a wave of static. “I think you’re right.”

“Licked-in-what?” Keith asked, his voice slightly distorted.

“They’re fractals, only they’re created by electricity,” Hunk explained. “I wonder if all that crazy energy made those caves or if the caves are what’s making it?”

“Well, either way,” Keith said grimly. “I really hope they didn’t try to shelter in the slot canyons.”

“In their shoes, I’d probably choose the caves,” Lance said. “But with those crystals, I don’t know how safe that would be.”

The bio-thermal sensors were only giving them a partial view of the planet. They needed the two in the storm-affected areas to wake up to complete the picture. The interference was limiting the sensor range, but the grid array was making up for it. But so far, those last two showed no signs of activating to give them those readings.

Little by little, the storm started losing power. After hanging over the desert for so long, it finally slowly drifted north and east.

This planet rotated faster than Earth. The night line was rapidly creeping up on this side of the planet.

The surface temperature started dropping. As the temperature neared and passed the freezing point, Hunk started really hoping they had actually gone underground.

There was a depressing lack of dots on the map to indicate any people. If they were alive at all, they couldn’t have gotten far.

The bio-thermal map warped and a band of static ran vertically down the map. The signal weakened, tore, and then stabilized.

“Um,” Lance said after a moment. “Coran, is it supposed to be doing that?”

“No,” Coran said on the monitor, tapping a command into his panel. The map refreshed, stabilized momentarily, and then went staticky again. “We’re getting too much interference. I’m afraid at this rate, the sensors will burn out within the varga.”

“A _varga_?” Hunk repeated, disbelieving. “That isn’t long.” They’d promised Zora it would be okay. Hunk sat back in his seat, feeling heavy all of a sudden. They’d promised it would be okay… and how was it going to be okay if they had a _varga_ before the sensors burned out and they had no idea where they were…

“Guys! A dot!” Pidge yelped.

Hunk jerked upright. There was a fuzzy dot maybe a half mile north of the crash.

Hunk spun the map so he could see elevation. The dot was deep underground inside one of the cave systems.

“Seems to be a Kestellian,” Allura said in relief, pressing a hand to her chest.

“Next question: How do we get to them?” Keith asked.

“Guessing they must have gone in through a crevice or sinkhole. There’s one not far from where we found the crews’ remains,” Coran was looking down at another monitor. “It’s quite small, though.” 

“I’m working on a route,” Pidge said.

Hunk spun the map again, trying to trace the path from that sinkhole Coran mentioned. It really was an example of a real-life fractal. The more he zoomed in, the more complexity was revealed.

Fresh interference rippled through the map. For a few seconds, it looked like the dot was repeated in every branch of the caverns with like symmetry.

“Wow,” Pidge said. “And now we know why the distress signal looked like it was in so many different places.”

“Right,” Hunk agreed. “Right. Bet if we looked now, it’d be doing it again.”

“Okay,” Pidge took a deep breath and tapped a few buttons. “I think this is probably our best chance at getting to them and the easiest evacuation route.” A brightly colored line traced the route from a different, larger sinkhole far to the south in one of the green belts. It looked large enough they’d be able to take their speeders for most of the way.

Hunk couldn’t even begin to hide his relief. “And bonus points for getting us away from the explodey salt flats,” he said.

Allura said, “Well done, Pidge. Coran and I will prepare the cryo-pods as a precaution.”

They turned south and dove beneath the cloud cover. Darkened desert and salt pans gave way to sprawling, primitive grasslands and grasslands gave way to thick jungle.

The rain here was gentler. It no longer sounded like his lion was under bombardment. It was much warmer too. Tendrils of thick fog snaked between the darkened, rain-soaked, shimmering treetops.

Soon, they were over a giant, dark blue hole in the middle of the rainforest. It looked like something huge had just punched a hole into the planet’s surface. The edges of the grey-rock bowl were clean like it was cut out by a razor.

“Whoa,” Hunk breathed. From the sounds of it, the others were as impressed as he was.

He’d seen pictures of _cenote_ in the Yucatán Peninsula, but this was on a much, much larger scale. Nothing on Earth even came close to comparison.

One-by-one, they descended into the bowl. In the lights from their lions, the water was so clear, so blue. The trees were so green.  Even from his current altitude, he could easily make out the features of the lake bottom. Scans showed the lake actually contained nice, fresh, safe water. 

As Hunk took his turn, he realized there was more to the hole than just the perfectly clean water. There was actually the mouth of a gigantic cave down there too. It was covered with white stalactites, that, at least from a distance, seemed thin and delicate. Since there were no matching stalagmites and the cave floor was gravel, Hunk guessed the ceiling had collapsed sometime kind of recently. They probably could form Voltron and still have plenty of headroom. It was deep enough the lions were going to be completely out of the rain.

As Hunk lowered out of his lion in his speeder, he started feeling better about this. They’d rescue whichever cadet this was, they’d probably be able to tell them where the others were, and they’d be on their way. Easy-peasy.

The caves were clear for the most part and there were no signs of the crazy energy. The walls were boring, grey, igneous rock and were more than wide enough for their speeders.

Occasional formations of white mineral deposits – calcium carbonate like on Earth – appeared to flow like water down the side of the cave. It reminded him of some of the caves near the Garrison.

The caves got narrower as they continued closer to the dot. The terrain became more treacherous and they started to see signs of recent flooding. They were soon forced into single-file.

“Got a mudpot up here, guys,” Keith said from the front, moving his speeder as close to the wall of the cave as he could. They were almost on top of the dot. “Be careful and hug the wall.”

Hunk took it in as they went around the rim. It was indeed, a giant patch of bubbling, purple mud. His sensors warned him it was boiling hot and highly acidic.

“What’s a mudpot?” Lance asked, “Like, I can see it’s mud…”

Hunk was torn between feeling frightened and fascinated. The purple color was unique and he kind of wanted to know what had given it that hue. “It’s sort of like a volcanic double-boiler. Only instead of chocolate, it’s sulfuric acid and rock –” 

“Oh, no.” Keith moaned, slowing.

“I do not like the sound of that,” Hunk muttered. He soon could see the reason. Someone had fallen into the mud. Purple mud was smeared along the rim and a short distance down. It was person-sized.

Hunk felt ill. There was no way they escaped without being hurt. He fought the urge to throw up. People had died in Yellowstone National Park back on Earth after falling into mudpots, dissolved in moments by the powerful acid.

They passed a half-melted spacesuit and helmet, all caked in mud. More melted lumps that might be whatever they were wearing under the suit were further down as if they’d stripped while moving.

The cave narrowed suddenly ahead, the opening too tight for their speeders.

Keith pulled over. Hunk pulled alongside him and the others behind. He was glad for his helmet, his sensors confirmed sulfur in the air. His stomach still wasn’t exactly happy with him and the rotten-egg sulfur stench would only make it worse.

 They continued on foot around the bend. There was a thick band of crystal running around the walls, floor, and ceiling of the cave. It caught the lights from their gauntlets, reflected and refracted the light. It was blinding.

And just beyond, bathed in the light from Keith’s gauntlet was a person collapsed on the cave floor. Barefoot and stripped down to their underwear, their skin pale and mottled with bruises, blood, and chemical burns. They were disturbingly pale.

Hunk’s breath caught in his throat. This cadet had blue hair pulled into two braided pigtails. They’d just found Zora.

Keith yelled, “There!” He started running.

“Zora!” Hunk yelled, “Zora, we’re here!”

Pidge and Lance were yelling too. Hunk stopped. Their voices sounded oddly muffled. Dull. Lifeless and stale, like the air couldn’t effectively carry the sound waves.

The air over the crystal band had an odd shimmer to it. Like heat mirages back at the garrison. But there was an almost geometric pattern to that shimmer…kind of reminded him of the lion’s force fields… 

Pidge only got a couple more steps than he did before she stopped in her tracks too.

“Keith! Wait!” Hunk yelled, “Stop!”

“Keith!” Pidge was yelling too.

Lance was sprinting now, his hand outstretched for Keith’s collar.

There was a blinding flash.

Hunk was knocked off his feet. Something landed on top of him, knocking the air out of his lungs. He could feel himself sliding.

He lay there for a few moments, coughing, gasping, fighting to catch his breath. Pidge rolled off him with a muted groan.

“Pidge,” Hunk groaned himself, “you okay?" 

“Yeah,” she said.

Lance and Keith had gone down in a tangle of arms of legs. Like Pidge and him, they were only just now starting to move.

“What the… what was that?” Keith pressed a hand to his helmet as he finally was able to sit upright.

“Some kind of force field, I think,” Pidge was still catching her breath, but she ran a quick scan. “Or particle barrier…”

Hunk pulled up his own scanner. There was definitely something there, though the waveform was weirdly erratic and energetic. It wasn’t like a normal force field or barrier at all.

“Hey, Coran?” Pidge asked over the radio.

The only reply was high-pitched static.

Lance looked stricken. He kept looking at Zora’s crumpled form and back at them. “So, how do we get through?”

Pidge was examining her readings, “I think we’re right under the mesa from earlier…”

“Wait, you mean the erupting one?” Hunk hadn’t realized they’d gone that far underground. But it was hard to gauge distance this far underground too. 

“Yeah, that one,” Pidge replied. “We’re closer to whatever created those beams. Whatever it is must be causing gravimetric, sonic, and electromagnetic anomalies.”

Hunk frowned. It made sense. They’d seen their share of weirdness on this planet. It messed with their sensors, communications, and even Blue’s sonics. But… gravity, sound, and light were all forms of energy with measurable wavelengths. Waves could be dulled or even destroyed under the right conditions. Soundproofing reduced sound waves, sunglasses protected the eyes from ultraviolet light by absorbing and reflecting that specific wavelength, and the castle’s hover tech did something similar with gravity.

“I wonder if we can attenuate the waveform or cause destructive interference?” Hunk mused, “Give the planet a taste of its own medicine?”


	4. Chapter 4

“So, what’s the plan?” Lance sounded skeptical.

“Maybe if we fire on the pillar with our lions, we can cause enough interference to break the force field,” Hunk was having a hard time not staring at Zora on the other side of that field. He desperately wanted her to move, groan; do something – _anything_ – to prove she was alright. “Kind of like how if we fire long enough on Galra shields, they eventually break.”

“Or maybe bring down the whole mesa, killing anyone still down here,” Keith pointed out.

“Oh,” Hunk felt defeated. “Right.” It was easy to think in terms of _space_. This was new.

Pidge was running calculations on her wrist device, “I think we might be able to avoid that if we’re careful.”

She looked up, “Lance: Start with a frequency just above the Blue Lion’s sonic scan and then gradually increase. Once we start seeing the waveform distorting, Keith repeats the process with the Red Lion’s lasers. Start with a non-destructive pulse and then gradually increase intensity.”

Pidge ran a brief simulation, showing the field going down once the waveforms canceled out, “Hunk and I will stay down here to monitor the field.”

“We’ll let Allura and Coran know; maybe they’ve seen something like this before.” Keith declared.

“Roger that,” Pidge answered.

From there on, it was just a matter of waiting as Keith and Lance made their way back to their lions. He began analyzing everything he could see; however, it was all pretty normal stuff he’d expect to see on a young planet. Volcanic rock, mineral formations caused by water seepage from above, and various silicates.

There was a notable absence of biological matter, not even as microbes or in fossilized form. Plants didn’t grow from nothing. There should at least be fungal spores. 

“Maybe they were planted by a comet or meteor strike?” Pidge suggested at one point. “We have some pretty fast-growing stuff on Earth…”

Still, Hunk couldn’t shake the feeling in his gut. The ship was sabotaged, crash landed _here_ of all places, and a relatively recent survey that said this planet was lifeless. The same survey and all the previous ones didn’t say a thing about dangerous atmospheric disturbances or weird storms or force fields that didn’t seem to be coming from anywhere!

Pidge tried countering with logical explanations but eventually ran out of plausible explanations for what they were seeing. She eventually started proposing theories that supported Hunk’s suspicions. 

“Lance and I are in position,” Keith’s voice finally broke their theory-crafting.

It didn’t take long before Lance found the right frequency. The field clearly didn’t like that, it buzzed and fizzed. Sparks occasionally made the hexagonal pattern clearly visible.

Keith had a harder time. Red’s lasers were meant to be weapons, not a glorified flashlight. Blue’s sonic cannon was far more adaptable, meant to serve both as a weapon and as a scanner. First few attempts went too high, too fast. Then it was too low, only to become too high with only a small adjustment. They had to resort to nudging it up a tenth at a time. 

At last the field sighed and a few last sparks died in the air.

Pidge tossed a rock through and it skipped across the cavern floor. They were running before it even came to rest.

Hunk knelt beside Zora.

She was covered head-to-toe in chemical burns. The entire right side of her back was a solid bruise and her right leg was bent at an unnatural angle at the knee.

Zora’s hands and arms had been sliced to ribbons. The fingers on her left hand had almost been sliced off. Her right hand had a deep cut across the palm, exposing bones and tendons. It looked like she’d tried to block several attacks with her arms…

Hunk gagged and the first bitter taste of vomit rose up his throat. She might be an alien but her blood was as red as their own. 

Pidge sympathetically winced and carefully wrapped her hands in towels they’d brought with them in the emergency kit. She wound a couple loops of first aid tape to hold them in place.

“Oh, that’s not good,” Pidge breathed as she reached Zora’s wrists. The skin tore like wet tissue paper and quickly soaked the towels. She pulled some kind of wound spray from the emergency kit and generously sprayed the wounds. The bleeding quickly stopped, but it didn’t do a thing for the blood already soaked into the towels and smeared on Pidge’s armor.

He swallowed his stomach contents back down again. Belched. Gagged again.

Pidge swept a scan down the length of Zora’s prone body.

“Don’t throw up,” Hunk told himself out loud. He squeezed his eyes shut and repeated it several times.

“Okay, help me turn her over,” Pidge sounded as sick as he felt.

Wait, wait. Turn her over? With those injuries? If that’s what she looked like from behind, she looked worse from the front and she probably shouldn’t be moved with wounds like that and they were going to turn her over?! He swallowed again and took several deep breaths.

“Hunk…”

“Right, sorry.” His heart in his throat, he helped to roll Zora over.

Zora’s face was a horrific patchwork of cuts and bruises. One eye was black, swollen to the point she probably couldn’t open it. Her nose was crooked, bloody mucus staining her upper lip.

A quick scan of his wrist device showed fractures and hairline fractures all over her face. But that scan also said she was alive, just unconscious.

“Oh man,” Hunk felt sick for her. She had to be in so much pain. 

It reminded him of Shiro. Dizzy and sick from that glowing alien wound, his breath ragged as he fought to stay conscious. He’d been in so much pain as they’d helped him out of the Black Lion’s pilot’s seat; down the ramp; each step nearly robotic until they could finally help him lay down on the stretcher…

Hunk felt an almost electric jolt as he realized it. Looking at her in person, he decided that Zora would easily pass for Japanese if she was careful. She was built like a mixed martial art fighter; her entire body was muscular – probably stronger than most people… 

She could probably fight like Shiro too. 

Hunk whimpered.

“We’ve got her. She’s injured but alive,” Pidge told the others over the com as she finished securing a brace around Zora’s knee. “Making our way up now.” 

“Roger that,” Keith said. “I’m going to see if I can find their campsite and search for clues.”

Pidge pulled a small device from their emergency kit. It looked almost like a TV remote, except it only had one button. Pidge pressed that button and gave it a small flick. A large, Altean-blue blanket unfurled from the remote.

Hunk helped sit Zora upright so Pidge could wrap it around her. Hunk gingerly slipped his arm under her knees, Pidge made sure Zora’s hands were in her lap, and Hunk carefully wrapped his other arm around her back. 

He’d barely started the lift when he felt Zora’s body tense. She groaned as he stood upright.

“I’m okay, you can put me down…” She slurred her words together, but he could understand her.

“No offense, but I think we have different definitions of ‘okay,’” Hunk told her as Pidge slung the emergency kit over her shoulder.

“Zora, right?” Pidge asked and got a weak nod in return. “I’m Pidge and he’s Hunk: We spoke over the com. We’re here to rescue you.”

Zora choked and tears started to trace pale streaks down her face.

“Do you know where your friends are?” Pidge asked, her voice catching slightly.

Zora tearfully shook her head.

Something glowed behind them. There was an angry buzz, kind of like a swarm of bees. The floor vibrated under their feet for a moment. 

Hunk nervously asked, “Umm, what was that?”

“Not again,” Zora moaned at the same time. 

“What is it?” Pidge brought up her computer for a scan.

“There must be another storm starting,” Zora mumbled from against his chest. “We got those vibrations every time the crystal core started charging…”

“Wait, what core?” Hunk was puzzled. They hadn’t seen anything like that on their way here.

Their radios screeched and what sounded like Keith’s voice broke in. Crackled. And then to static. Lance’s voice next, layering on top of Keith’s. Interference wailed.

It sounded bad, whatever it was.

“Keith; Lance – do you copy?” Hunk only received more static as a response.

“Coran? Allura?” Pidge asked, but the response was the same as his.

Another vibration. The glow behind them returned, peaked, and faded. Another vibration shook dirt loose from the ceiling. The ground bounced slightly under their feet. It felt almost like a large piece of excavating equipment had passed, scraping the ground as it moved along.

“Oh, no.” Pidge groaned and held up her wrist device for him to see, “The field is back up.” The energetic readings had returned, just as high as they were before the field collapsed.

“Wait, you mean we’re trapped here?!” Hunk yelped, looking for another exit.

“Maybe,” Zora croaked and struggled to sit up a little higher to see the readings for herself. Pidge moved so she could see more clearly and Zora relaxed into his arms. “It’s like this whole planet is one massive,” she paused for several long moments. “One massive… thing – dynamo… generator? Sorry…”

“Hang in there, Zora,” Pidge told her and brought up the sonic scan. “We’ll find a way out.” The branch they were in was a dead end or at least looked like it from this angle. 

“Zora, where’s this core you mentioned?” Pidge asked, focusing on the chamber they were in. Her fingers paused over one section not far from where they were. It almost looked like you could almost go through the floor or the ceiling. It wasn’t solid like the rest of the rock but showed as translucent.

“It’s crystal,” Zora said. “It’s behind us, deeper inside this cavern.”

“Can we get through the floor or ceiling?” Pidge asked, leading the way.

“I don’t know,” Zora muttered. “We used a drone. The discharge fried it.”

The floor went from roughly level to pitch sharply downward. Hunk carefully picked his way down, afraid he was going to drop Zora. He doubted she could take it in her condition.

“Have a drop here,” Pidge cautioned. She guided him down first one step and then another.

Another vibration, stronger than the others. The air ahead of them began to glow, increasing brightness until his helmet automatically darkened. Hunk turned to shield Zora.

The sonic map showed they were almost directly on top of the crystalline area. 

“Wow,” Pidge exclaimed in awe as the glow faded.

Hunk turned around and took the final step down.

“Whoa!” Hunk breathed.

Hexagonal purple crystals arranged like columnar basalt slowly pulsed in a deep depression in the floor and hole in the ceiling. They were eerily symmetric as if they were carved that way. A slender filament of energy danced between the largest columns.

The angry bees noise began again. Hunk turned around once more to shield Zora. Once again, the glow intensified until his helmet darkened. Off to the side, the light gleamed off a small field of metallic debris. Zora’s drone, most likely.

Zora was being awful quiet. Hunk glanced down at her. She’d fainted.

The vibration intensified to a rumble and then faded.

“So… what is that?” Hunk asked as Pidge started scanning. He really wasn’t coming up with anything off the top of his head and he wasn’t going to get any closer for Zora’s sake. He was probably already too close.

“… I don’t know.” Pidge looked up at the crystal and back to the readings. “This isn’t matching any known compounds.”

Hunk stared up at the crystal, wracking his brain for ways they could get out of this. They were cut off from Allura, Coran, Lance, and Keith, so it wasn’t like they could help.

“Too bad Allura can’t use the Castle to teleport us out like _Star Trek_ ’s transporters,” Hunk remarked.

“I know, right?” Pidge agreed with a faint chuckle.

The delicate thread of energy was growing larger and there were more of them. It wouldn’t take long before that reached a size big enough to do to them what it did to Zora’s drone.

The rumble started again, shaking dirt and small rubble from the ceiling. Hunk ducked, curling around Zora to protect her from the debris. The glow from above was stronger than below. It kind of reminded him of what Allura looked like when she powered up the Castle. 

Or what the bridge looked like after Coran and he had returned with a new Balmera crystal…

“Wait!” Hunk yelled. “The crystals!” 

“We can blow them up like Sendak did to the Castle!” Pidge shouted back to him.

Lance… when Sendak blew up the crystal. Hunk froze. Lance, lying on the floor of the bridge. Barely alive. Dying.

Hunk looked around frantically, “We need cover! Or else we’ll wind up in a cryo-pod too!”

“But you need to be able to shoot it!” Pidge used her jetpack to jump back up to the higher level.

“Wait, what-what-what?” Hunk squawked. “Why me?”

“You have a ranged bayard!” Pidge shouted back to him. “If we find the right spot, you can shoot from cover!”

Hunk scrambled after her. That was a good point. He could be safe too if they found the right spot. He didn’t like it, but he wanted out more. 

“Here!” Pidge barked. It was a small alcove. Really just a fissure in the rock. It would be tight, but they’d probably all fit.

Hunk ladled Zora inside and Pidge helped him to nestle her as tight to the back wall as possible. The sides of the fissure were tight. He was basically wedged in place.

Pidge braced herself in front of him and brought up her shield. There was just enough room to stick the business end of his bayard out.

“Ready?” Pidge asked. 

“As ready as I’m going to be,” Hunk replied, shifting the power on his bayard from its normal gun mode to a high-energy beam. He dialed the power up to the maximum output.

He opened fire.

The roar of millions of angry bees filled the cavern. It grew.

The cave floor started to vibrate. Soon, it was shaking violently under his feet.

Crystals started popping, showering sparks of superheated crystal. Larger crystals cracked, melted.

Rubble rained down. The cavern screamed like a ship passing too close overhead.

His helmet darkened. Continued darkening until all he could see was the crystal.

Roaring. The ground bucking under his feet. The fissure pressing into his sides. 

The crystal core exploded.


	5. Chapter 5

The light faded and soon Hunk could see again.

The core had been destroyed but the roar continued. Shaking. It was like a large piece of excavating equipment was working right beside him. Rubble was raining down. Pidge had spun, half kneeling over Zora with her shield raised.

A retort like a nearby sonic boom rattled the cavern. Pidge dove, shielding Zora fully. Hunk raised his own shield and took a half step back to cover his teammate. He couldn’t go back much further without stepping on Pidge and Zora.

Another. Rubble, dust, and yellow light flooded the cavern. A faint growl filled his mind. Another boom. And then Yellow Lion burst through the wall and ceiling of the cavern.

Hunk stared for a moment in disbelief before laughing. His lion definitely qualified as “large equipment.”

As they’d rushed into the waiting mouth, vines started spreading through the cavern.

“Whoa! I’d say our lions did _not_ like that!” Hunk shouted and laughed in profound relief as he laid Zora down and jumped into the pilot’s seat.

Pidge laughed and grinned by way of reply. 

Hunk punched it. His lion pulled out of the hole and leaped skyward.

“You guys okay?” Lance’s sounded stressed over the radio. Ragged as though he’d been screaming.

“Yeah,” Pidge said and then sighed in relief. “That was close.”

Hunk pulled his lion around to look back at the mesa. They had been right under the one that erupted under the blue and yellow lions and had sent them into evasive maneuvers. The way it was still shuddering, it probably wouldn’t be happening again. Black plumes of smoke rose into the sky where he distinctly remembered there were crystals. Vines from the green lion writhed and clung to the rock, stabilizing the entire structure.

“What did you do?” Keith nearly yelled, his voice cracking.

“Hunk and I _may_ have decided to try blowing stuff up,” Pidge said smugly.

“And for bonus points,” He couldn’t resist. He probably shouldn’t say it, but he couldn’t resist at least trying to tease Keith. “We _didn’t_ bring the mesa down on our heads.”

He was hoping he’d at least rewarded by Keith’s nasal growl. However, there was no reply.

“Keith, you find anything?” Coran asked over the radio. Hunk could see the glittering underbelly of the Castle between the gathering clouds. The interference wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been. His sensors warned that there was another disturbance growing nearby and turbulence directly above him. It looked clear, but based on what happened earlier, he had little doubt there was a lot he couldn’t see.

“Nothing,” Keith said. “It’s like they completely vanished.”

“I’m going to take another sonic scan,” Lance announced. He landed and did just that.

He watched as the map adjusted as the scan finished uploading. Overall, there wasn’t a huge change. Their speeders seemed intact and currently safe. However, there was a lot of rocks between where they left them and the mesa.

“Zora? Zora!” Pidge yelled from behind him, “Hunk! Zora’s pulse is dropping!”

Hunk spun around in his seat. Zora was deathly pale. Her lips weren’t blue, but they were colorless. Pidge looked up at him, her eyes wide with fear. He whipped his lion around and began rushing back to the sinkhole.

“Don’t panic!” Coran commanded. There was a brief band of interference as he continued, “She’s probably fine – well, fine- _ish_. Kestellians go into a kind of suspended animation rather than circulatory shock. They even have special arterial valves in their joints to close off a compromised limb.” 

After an audible sigh of relief, Pidge said, “That would explain why her wrists started bleeding after I touched them but her hands weren’t bleeding at all.”

“Precisely,” Coran said. “Probably was already going into it when you found her. The first signs appear in the extremities and work inward, then slight confusion as the brain starts preparing for hibernation.”

Hunk breathed a sigh of relief himself. “Thanks, Coran. Hey, I wonder what their home planet’s like to cause that kind of adaptation?”

In daylight, the sinkhole was even prettier than what it had been in the rain and lit only by the lights of their lions. In the dark, he hadn’t noticed the delicate vines or the tiny, white flowers that covered them like a scatter of stars.

The pilotless green lion settled down on the gravel, right where Pidge had left her before they’d gone into the caverns.

Certain he was well beyond the storm and rough turbulence, he climbed skyward. The pristine blue sky darkened and twinkling stars appeared. The pale-yellow, soap-bubble-like band that marked the edge of the planet’s atmosphere passed and the Castle grew steadily in his viewport.

 

Hunk breathed a sigh of relief as he set down in his bay. The familiar lights and cool grey metal comforting and almost surreal after the cavern and the glowing crystals and deadly energy.

It didn’t last long.

He fought the urge to freak out as he lifted Zora. She was so pale, so cold to the touch, so completely limp; if Coran hadn’t said she was probably in suspended animation, Hunk would have been sure she had died en route.

Coran had a stretcher from the infirmary waiting for them as they exited his Lion.

He felt so cold as they hurried through the Castle to the infirmary. The lights made her look even paler. Even though the stretcher’s hover engine was intended to minimize any jarring, her body was so limp it seemed to shake and shiver like jello as they ran through the halls. 

Allura had five healing pods ready to go. One was already open and waiting for an occupant. Lance and Keith had beaten them to the infirmary, probably only by a few moments. Lance was watching Allura work and Keith was leaning against the wall closest to the waiting pod, his arms crossed.

He held his breath as Coran swept a scanner down Zora’s body. Nothing. He repeated the scan again and then for a third. Allura pressed her hands to her mouth. Pidge looked down and off to side slightly. Lance met Hunk’s gaze, exchanging a look of deep concern. On the fifth sweep, the scanner finally beeped to register signs of life.

“She’s in suspended animation,” Coran confirmed. He looked relieved but also dismayed. “Though, this also means the cryo-replenishers won’t be of much use.”

“Why not?” Hunk asked.

“Wait, what?” Lance said simultaneously then shook his head in disbelief. “I thought they worked for everyone!”

Pidge murmured something as she read over Allura’s arm. The princess nodded in response.

“Normally, they would. However, she’s producing a sort of natural antifreeze and special hormones to protect her internal organs,” Coran explained.

Coran pointed to a blanket closer to Keith and he passed it to him. He shook the blanket out and then tucked it in around Zora. “While a natural part of Kestellian physiology, I’m afraid the interaction between those body chemicals and the cryo-replenishers is unpredictable at best. We simply can’t risk it.”

Allura was typing rapidly into the console. Hunk couldn’t read Altean, but he knew the screen was medications the castle was able to fabricate. She seemed to find what she was looking for and selected it, “We can give her some medicine to halt the process, but that will take some time.”

No one seemed to want to ask how much time. Or how much time Zora had before… well, _before_.

Coran opened a panel in the wall and withdrew several floating trays. He opened another panel and started loading the trays with bandages, equipment, and other supplies. As the supplies mounted, Hunk realized Coran wasn’t just going to lightly cover Zora’s wounds, he was going to treat her wounds the old-fashioned way.

Allura retrieved an injection device from the slot in the base of the console and pressed it to Zora’s neck. It clicked and then sighed.

Coran reached under the blankets for one of Zora’s hands. Hunk looked away before he had to fight to keep from throwing up again. He winced as he heard the tape tear and the wet plop as Coran set the towel aside. He put one hand up to block any chance of seeing what he was doing.

Zora was smart like Pidge, strong like Shiro… resourceful. She’d been talking, helpful, and now she was barely alive. Did Zora’s family know what happened? Or did the ship just… vanish?

Kind of like they did… that night out in the desert.

His throat tightened.

Lance was the one to finally say something, “So… what’s the plan?”

“We need to find the others,” Keith said quietly. “Those are defensive wounds. She fought something – or _someone_. But I don’t think she’d have gotten her suit off without help.”

“And then they left her there…” Lance growled.

“Maybe they didn’t have a choice,” Keith growled back.

“Regardless of the circumstances of why she was alone,” Allura turned slightly to look at each of them in turn. “It’s clear the others are in grave danger.”

“Maybe we can try retracing their steps,” Hunk said. He heard Coran mutter something sympathetic and fought not to look. Allura was leaning in to see. “Like when you lose something, but you know you sat it down someplace and you just can’t remember where…”

Pidge was looking thoughtful, “Coran, Allura… you said you knew what species the two brothers were and that they’re probably rare. Maybe if we tune the sensors to expressly look for that species, maybe we can find the others…”

“Or at least give us something to go off from,” Keith added. “Would they instinctively go deeper? Anything that might improve their chances of survival?”

From the long pause, Coran was clearly wracking his brain for everything he knew, “Well, Levlians are a semiaquatic race.” He muttered, “Let’s see…” Hunk could imagine him counting down on his fingers, though he doubted he was doing that right now, “They breathe air, but can hold their breath for an exceptionally long time – between fifteen and twenty doboshes. They have strong, rudder-like tails and sleek builds that allow them to swim at great speed. They have bioluminescent limbal rings and retroreflectors in their eyes which allow them to see in extremely low-light conditions. They have transparent nictitating membranes as well – sort of like a built-in pair of swim goggles.”

Keith had raised his eyebrow at the long description. “So… going off what I understood… guessing they’re like humanoid sea otters?”

Of course, neither Altean would have any concept of what those were but Hunk could see the analogy.

“Yeah,” Lance agreed. “They’ll try to find deep water… maybe an underwater cavern or air pocket? Lay low until they think it’s safe.”

“What about the werewolf guy and the professor?” Hunk asked somberly. “Guessing they can’t hold their breath like that…”

“They probably scouted first and then guided the other two down,” Pidge added. “So long as their suits were intact, the dive wouldn’t have been a problem.” 

“With what happened to Zora, I’m not sure we can count on that,” Keith said softly. “I’m with Hunk, we start at the crash site and track them on foot.” 

Allura waved a hand to bring up the map. Aside from their speeders and the Green Lion, there was a depressing lack of dots. The sensors had been able to map the entire Balmera and monitor its vitals, plus give them data on Galra and Balmeran locations.

“Am I the only one noticing there’s no other life forms? I mean, the sensors can pick up Galra robots.” Hunk asked, “What attacked Zora?”

“I don’t know,” Allura said after a long pause. “But it is deeply disturbing…”

Alarms sounded.

“The scanners on board the _Archer_ detected movement!” Allura waved her hands, bringing up the feeds from the scanners.

Various angles of the darkened interior of the passenger compartment of the ship filled the monitors. There wasn’t really much to that area; no place to hide aside from the restrooms. 

This would be the perfect spot for something to jump out. Or the cameras to fail. Or for a shadow to dart across like some kind of alien ghost monster! 

Hunk whimpered.

“Okay, this is freaky,” Lance said dubiously after a few moments of watching the feed. It still said it was detecting something. But there was clearly nothing there. At least that they could see.

“We should go check it out,” Keith declared.

 

* * *

 

The trip back down to the planet was uneventful, even though he could still feel the goosebumps on his arms and the hairs on the back of his neck. Hunk had done his best to ignore the overwhelming sense of dread as he took Pidge back to her lion and then as they returned to the wreck together.

The _Archer_ was exactly how they left it. Doors shut, the replacement generators they’d left untouched. Life support, air filtration, and airlocks all showing no change in activity. The doors hadn’t been opened.

However, sensors still indicated something _alive_ had been within close proximity to them. But nothing had been caught on visual. Nothing on thermal. 

“This isn’t possible,” Hunk exclaimed after he’d shut down his connection to the sensor. “Well, it’s sorta possible… for the storms to make the exact patterns that simulate a nearby person… all at the same time… I mean, it couldn’t be ghosts, right? There’s no way this could be a haunted planet? I mean, it’s sorta scary but… is anyone else getting serious ghost ship vibes?”

“Hunk, relax.” Pidge said, “Yes, it’s possible – it’s just not _probable_. The storm might have interfered with the sensor.”

“Yeah, but the shields held the entire time.” Hunk really didn’t like the ship now. It’d been kind of creepy before, but now it was just something out of a horror film. “We’d have noticed if something that energetic had made it through, right? Right?”

“Maybe,” Pidge said noncommittally. “There’s a lot of exotic physics at play on this planet; this might even be a new phenomenon.”

Lance had gone looking for other bags or luggage, but returned from the cargo hold empty-handed, “Okay, so we have bags for Xande, Maro, and Kai. Nothing for Zora or the professor.”

“Maybe… they took it with them?” Keith said with a shrug from the other side of the room where he was checking the emergency supply lockers. “Looks like they at least took rations with them when they left.”

He closed the current locker he was looking through and opened another.

Something white and fuzzy fell out of it. Looked almost like a softball, except for the faint glow. It silently bounced along the floor.

And then exploded against the back of a seat like a small bomb.

Smoke lazily curled from the back of the seat until the air scrubbers kicked in and sucked it away.

“What was that?” Keith shouted, still hoarse from screaming. He sidestepped away from the lockers, not taking his eyes off the doors.

“Some… kind of plasma or static discharge, I think?” Pidge answered breathlessly.

Lance was just staring at where it had been in shock. He was shaking. A faint whimper escaped his lips. 

Hunk didn’t know where to move. Where to look. There had been no warning there’d been anything dangerous inside the locker or the ship and the sensors in their suits hadn’t picked up anything either. It came from nowhere and exploded like a small bomb – what if it hit Keith – what if it hit him?

“There are burn marks on some of the other seats over here too,” Keith said after a moment. It was almost a casual remark.

There was a brief glow in the door to the restroom. A fizzle. A faint pop. And then an explosion. Metal clanged and tiles rained from the ceiling. Thick smoke billowed from the door.

They scrambled from the ship and didn’t stop until they were safely to their lions.

Hunk sat in his lion, taking deep breaths like he’d been taught and doing his best not to panic. “It’s just business as usual with this planet – no big deal. Of course, the _Archer_ had to pick the freakiest, scariest, most homicidal planet to crash into, but that was all _Murphy’s Law_ , right?”

“And now we know why they abandoned ship,” Lance declared over the com in his classic high-pitched _scared_ voice and then laughed nervously.

There were no further signs of that weird discharge, not that it showed up on scanners anyway.

“Let’s find that hole or crevice,” Keith said after a few minutes.

As he nervously made his way out of his lion, something occurred to him. Zora hadn’t mentioned the energy balls – though it wasn’t like she had all that much time to tell them everything she’d seen. “Hey, someone was moaning in the background of that distress call. Did one of those balls hit someone?”

“That would not be good,” Pidge replied.

Keith led them up the embankment and past what remained of the makeshift graves. The desert was something he was intimately familiar with, even if it was an alien desert, and they were more than happy to let him take the lead. 

The terrain turned rough, eventually leading up the second embankment out of the saltpan. Ahead, they could see the first of the slot canyons. They hiked up an alluvial fan of bright orange mud that spread out the mouths and into the largest canyon.

“Okay, Coran, where’s this hole?” Keith asked over the com.

“You’re nearly there,” Coran replied. “It should be on your left coming up.”

Lance bounded up an uncomfortably large boulder to look around the canyon with his scope. “I have visual,” He announced. “Against the side of the canyon.”

It was just a long, wide hole. It was as though someone took a knife and sliced along the side of the canyon like they were trying to free the crunchy edge of a brownie from the side of the pan. It was just big enough that the mud hadn’t buried it.

“I don’t see a rope,” Hunk observed aloud. “Wait, did they _jump_?” 

“Shh!” Keith hissed, leaning over the hole.

Faintly, there was something electronic beeping from inside the hole. Whatever it was, it was shrill and had to be super loud to be heard from this far away. It sounded vaguely familiar. The tone was different, but Hunk remembered seeing something like this before… where? 

“Sounds kind of like…” Lance started to say, his voice trailing off.

The Garrison. Yeah… on one of the first responders. Hunk’s eyes went wide. He knew what it was.

Keith jumped. 

“A personal distress signal unit!” Hunk yelped and they leaped in after him.

It was quite a drop. Hazy sunlight – tinted orange from the rocks and mud above – filtered down. The roar from their jetpacks echoed, louder than what they actually were. The electronic screech from the distress signal unit was gradually getting louder too. They were almost to the bottom when the distress ping finally appeared on their visors.

Coran’s distorted voice crackled in their ears, “Hey, guys?” Hunk knew the tone of voice well, it meant something that may or may not be trouble, “It looks like we might…” The feed from the Castle once again dissolved into noisy bands of static and then cut out completely.

As they finally landed on the ominously soft, wet mud at the bottom, the sound was overwhelming. Hunk sank into the orange mud up to his knees. He fired his jetpack again to pull himself free. His feet found a more solid patch a short distance away.

They followed the sound to a large boulder. Perched on top was a backpack; hard-sided in color-blocked white, blue, and grey just like the cadets’ uniforms. 

With a wince, Pidge switched off the distress signal.

She picked up the bag and examined it. There was no clasp, nothing that would be an obvious way to get into it. There were no straps that would go over the wearer’s shoulders.

Pidge brushed her thumb over a blue square on what may have been the front of the bag. It beeped and glowed briefly.

“Looks like a biorhythmic scanner…” She observed as she brought up her computer. Having already beaten Kestellian encryption once, she hacked into the backpack in moments.

Pidge’s screen filled with a communications terminal written in Kestellian.

Someone had been trying to contact… the Castle of Lions.


	6. Chapter 6

“Oh, this is definitely a trap.” Hunk groaned, looking around for ghosts or monsters or whatever was out there in the dark. The deep shadows could hide most anything. The mud was thick and covered nearly every surface. As his eyes adjusted, he started picking out all the debris down here too. For a moment, he thought he spotted the bones of something massive, but it was only a dead tree. “Is anyone else freaking out?”

“Oh yeah,” Lance squeaked. “Same.” Lance had been uncharacteristically quiet ever since the glowing ball had blown up. Hunk hadn’t seen him this freaked out since King Alfor’s rogue A.I. had taken over the ship.

Pidge was quickly looking through the backpack’s systems. “Apparently, this is a military-grade Kestellian Mobile Communications Relay System. Basically: a communication base in a backpack.”

“Was this Zora’s?” Keith asked, kneeling beside Pidge and reading over her shoulder.

“I don’t think so. I’m not seeing her listed in the user profiles. She’d need to either hack into the system or have military credentials,” Pidge’s voice trailed off, and she rapidly pressed a short sequence of buttons.

“Doesn’t seem like it went through the storm, either,” Keith observed. He had a point; Hunk’s legs were orange up to his knees. The others’ legs were splattered with orange mud too. The backpack, however, was only slightly dirty. Like it had been placed there just a few minutes ago.

“Oh, that’s interesting,” Pidge remarked.

“Uh oh,” Hunk muttered. He wasn’t about to ask if it was good or bad interesting. He’d had enough _interesting_ things for one day.

“Whoever had this tried using it _after_ we arrived,” Pidge said. “They also transmitted in the blind guard to Death’s Head.”

“Then… this couldn’t be Zora’s?” Keith asked slowly. “There’s no way she could have made it from here to the mesa in that time.”

“Wait, what about one of the other cadets?” Lance asked. “Or the professor?”

“They’re not in the system either,” Pidge answered. “Plus, this is a seriously advanced piece of communication equipment. I don’t think any of the passengers except Zora would have any possible chance of knowing how to use this.”

“Wouldn’t she know how to reach the station directly? Isn’t _blind guard_ for when you don’t know the right emergency frequency?” Hunk’s mind was reeling. He was right, this was a trap, and this thing was just meant to lure them deep into the caverns. Pidge was frowning. She was just looking through what was on the screen. “I mean, wouldn’t she have codes… or frequencies… or a senior officer? Or… _something_?”

Pidge leaned back and ran a simulation on her wrist device. It took Hunk a minute to realize she was running the biometrics they had from Zora.

“The person who had this last was definitely _not_ Zora,” Pidge announced.

Lance ran forward a couple steps, his rifle raised. Shot.

Hunk yelped and dropped to the muddy rock.

Keith brought his sword and shield up.

As if in slow motion, a spider-like, robotic turret rocked on a high outcrop before slipping over the edge. Orange water splashed to mark the place it fell.

“Nice try,” Lance announced smugly, resting the butt of the rifle against his shoulder. “But I played way too many first-person shooters not to notice that.”

Keith laughed a humorless, one syllable chuckle, “Nice shot.”

Before Lance could acknowledge the rare compliment, the air was filled with turret fire. They raced for the first opening they spotted. Shots ricocheted off their shields and the rocks. Muddy water splashed.

Lance and Hunk returned fire, but for every robot they shot, there were more to take its place.

Keith ducked and rolled off to the side. He dove to evade a shot. He struggled to regain traction in the slick mud for the span of a couple heartbeats.

Hunk imagined he intended to pull one of his crazy wall-jumps, but his boot skidded against the smooth rocks. He fell. Slapped the ground, rolled. He came up sprinting, more orange than red and white.

Together, they ran for an opening in the wall.

The cavern beyond the opening was tight. Only Pidge could run upright.

The turrets swarmed after them, firing the whole time. Shots screamed by his helmet and ricocheted off the rocks and his shield.

The floor sloped sharply downward.

Hunk screamed as they fell into the dark. He flared the jets in his boots to correct his fall, almost fired his jetpack to slow himself. Thought better of it.

They landed in dark, waist-deep water. In the narrow cones of their lights, it was even more orange than the mud outside. A strong gust of wind blew from the darkness beyond their lights, towards the hole they’d just come down.

The walls were charred.

Hunk glanced behind him. Something had burnt… Angled upwards. Blown that way by the gust?

Just ahead, the walls of the tunnel turned from black to chalky white.

Hunk’s helmet declared them to be the same minerals as the salt flats outside. Unstable nitrate salts, stionium dust, and casoxene.

“Wait!” Hunk yelped, stopping once they were past the white deposits. “Lance! Next gust – shoot the white stuff!”

“What!?” Keith screeched in his ear.

“Trust me!” Hunk shouted back.

“Got it!” Lance yelled, taking aim.

Hunk had loved chemistry class back at the garrison. Mister Kraus used to start every class with a literal bang. Tossing pure sodium into a beaker of water; igniting a balloon filled with hydrogen gas. But nothing had prepared him for the day when Kraus had ignited a minuscule sample of stionium dust bonded with nitrate salts. He could still vividly remember the pressure in his chest and the wave of surprisingly intense heat that had blown past him all the way in the back of the auditorium. Iverson was not amused; and, had barred any future demonstrations like that inside the garrison.

“Brace yourself! It’s going to get a little hot in here!” Hunk shouted, bringing his shield up and bracing himself.

The gust started. Lance shot.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl as the shot hit. White deposits glittered, turned orange, and flames blossomed. It rushed down the walls of the cave.

The world turned to a staggering white.

The pressure wave reached him first. Hunk felt his feet leave the ground.

The roar of a freight train filled his ears.

He could feel the rush of intense heat profoundly through his suit. His shield cracked to a spider web. Shattered.

Muddy water closed over the face of his helmet.

The churning water made it difficult for Hunk to get his feet back under him. Finally, he climbed to his feet, emerging from the water to the tunnel lit by falling embers.

The explosion had caused a mudslide. Thick, orange mud and robot debris filled the hole, blocking it – at least until the next flash flood washed it away.

“Good thinking,” Pidge panted, leaning against the wall of the cave.

Keith chuckled his agreement, “Yeah.”

Lance laughed, but not for the same reason Keith had. He brushed his fingers against the wall, turned the light on in his gauntlet, and snickered.

“Hey guys, check this out,” Lance said.

Someone had carved crude drawings into the rock, with a line of Morse Code chiseled beneath:

... - .. .-.. .-..     .- .-.. .. ...- .

“Still alive.”

* * *

Hours later, they were still on that same, tantalizing course. The cadets had left a trail for rescuers to follow, mostly in the form of short, scratched messages or pictograms on the wall of the cave.

Of course, whoever was after them also had a clear trail.

However, it did his heart good when they found the dried impression of a rifle butt and a partial stock in the mud next to one of the messages. The cadets might be armed. Or at least had been when they’d been through. Unless whoever was following them stopped long enough to leave an impression of their rifle.

It was hard to tell, thanks to all the mud when the water had last risen this high.

The message above the impression was both in Morse Code and encrypted. Pidge was working on it, intently glaring into her display.

Hunk was pretty sure the code wasn’t called “Morse Code” on the cadets’ planet. But the fact that it was the exact same code as the one on Earth was fascinating. Maybe they had contact with people from Earth? Or perhaps someone got abducted and eventually wound up there?

Keith and Lane were scouting ahead. Attempting to figure out where they went from here.

“Okay, I think I got it.” Pidge finally announced, “It says there are two north poles, to compensate by fifteen degrees.”

Hunk was confused, “Um… what the quiznak does that mean? This planet doesn’t have two north poles.”

“But I think I know a planet that does,” Pidge brought up the data on the Kestellian Sector she’d downloaded from the Castle-Ship before they left. “The cadets are from Kestel Six, which is the sixth moon of the mega-planet Kestel.”

The planet that appeared on Pidge’s display was massive. Far larger than a terrestrial planet had a right to be. It also was an ancient planet that had long since lost its atmosphere. However, three of its largest moons were inhabited.

Hunk grinned, “And Kestel has double north and south poles?”

“Fifteen degrees puts the official pole… here,” Pidge marked the spot on the map of the mega-planet. “Plugging that adjustment into the map…”

And the map for this planet showed no difference. Pidge reran, this time using the offsets. Again, no significant difference.

They exchanged puzzled glances.

“Hey guys,” Lance called. He and Keith were on the way back.

Keith was once again more orange than red and white, but, he had what looked like a muddy soccer ball under one arm.

“There’s water up ahead – looks deep.” Lance said, “Any luck with that?”

“No, doesn’t work with anything we’ve tried,” Pidge sounded defeated.

“Maybe this will have something,” Keith offered the muddy ball to Pidge. “It was buried in some deep mud, but its distress ping went off when we got close.”

Pidge scrubbed some of the mud off with her hand, stiffened, and gasped. She nearly shouted in delight, “It’s a drone!”

She quickly found the access panel and popped it off. An inner, sealed lid had a sticker with the academy’s logo, with a scrawled signature. Over the entire label was a large, red stamp written in Kestellian gibberish. Beside it, in messy print was and name, “Kai-sala Agema.”

“Wait,” Hunk exclaimed. “Wait, wait… wasn’t that the werewolf guy’s name?”

Without a proper screwdriver, it took Pidge a few more minutes to get the inner lid open. Whatever had caused to drone to wind up in the mud had rattled it to the point the innards were severely damaged. Hunk frowned.

Pidge, however, was undaunted. She stuck her hand deep into the drone, her face screwed up in an expression of concentration. At last, she cheered and pulled a silver rectangle from the robot. “Yes! The hard drive is intact!”

“Excellent, Pidge!” Keith grinned.

“So, connect my gauntlet and get the data…” She declared giddily and did just that. Her display showed the contents downloading.

Lance’s face was skeptical, “Downloading… still downloading… and still downloading.”

“Lance, it’s a huge drive with a lot of data,” Pidge was slightly annoyed. “It’s going take a few minutes.”

“That’s what she said,” Lance replied without missing a beat. He was out of range for Pidge to hit, but she scooped a bit of mud from the drone and flicked it at him.

The download completed and Pidge pulled up the file list. She sorted by date and time.

There were video files created after the crash.

She selected the last one.

A grainy video of the cadets running through a slot canyon appeared. Begging Doctor Sorocan, barely a dot in the distance, to stop running. They were armed, in full space suits.

The rain was sheeting down in a relentless torrent. Water was already pouring into the canyon in orange cascades.

One shoved their rifle into another’s hands and leaped from the water. Feet braced against the wall like Keith would do to perform one of his crazy wall jumps…

Only to be swept off their feet and back to the group. The others grabbed them, hauled them to their feet.

“Fall back!” One of the cadet’s boomed, “Fall back!”

“But Doctor Sorocan!” Zora’s voice screamed.

“We can’t help him if we drown!” Another, heavily accented voice, shouted loudly. Maybe Kai’s?

“We need to get back to the ship…” The speaker paused.

Two of the cadets seemed to freeze momentarily. The drone caught a glimpse of their faces. It was the brothers; the alien sea-otter guys. They grabbed their fellow cadets from behind. Braced themselves.

A wall of water appeared around the bend.

It was on them before Hunk could process what was happening.

The video went to static… and then nothing.


	7. Chapter 7

Even knowing from the graffiti scratched into the wall of the cavern that they’d survived being swept down here, Hunk found the implications chilling. They’d been in the slot canyons during a storm. Probably the only reason they survived was the sea-otter guys. But the professor?

“That’s not good,” Hunk said softly.

Pidge silently selected another video with an earlier time stamp than the one in the canyon. The cadets had set the drone up to record overnight, the video was roughly eight hours of footage. Pidge skimmed, but there wasn’t much to see. The cadets took turns caring for the professor, a few bathroom breaks, one of the sea-otter brothers bringing the box of donuts into the frame. In the grainy, night-vision footage, it was hard to tell which one. Both were wearing grey hooded sweatshirts with the hoods up and dark pants.

A few quick frames showing Zora helping the dark-haired brother, Maro, swept by.

“Wait! Rewind,” Keith said quickly.

Pidge rewound. Zora and Maro, limping back to the seats. The others rose groggily, rushing to them.

Maro had been shot.

Zora’s knuckles were bloodied and raw like she’d been fighting. Her expression was chillingly vacant as she robotically reported what happened. Someone had been in the cargo hold. They’d caught them going through the supplies.

The intruder had shot Maro before Zora managed to disarm them. Whoever it was, she’d lost them in the darkness of the cargo hold.

“How?” Kai asked incredulously. “We’re the only ones aboard!”

“They had a decommissioned spook suit,” Zora stated flatly.

Lance muttered, “What the heck is a spook suit?”

“Maybe they’re like those suits the Blade of Marmora wears?” Hunk looked to Keith for confirmation. He’d started training with Kolivan and the Blade of Marmora. Maybe it was something they covered?

“Maybe,” Keith replied. “But they don’t decommission their suits as far as I know. Whatever those are, guessing that probably isn’t what they’re actually called.”

Back on the video, they started dressing Maro’s wound. Pidge wound forward as they started ripping up t-shirts for wound dressing and prepared some injection thingy. Hunk guessed a hemostatic of some kind. Maro evidently didn’t enjoy it from his reaction.

Zora walked away from the others very suddenly. Pidge allowed the video to play.

“Is she okay?” Kai asked, barely audible to the drones.

“No,” Xande replied pointedly as he walked to the drones. “She’s going to freak out once the adrenaline wears off.” He reached up and moved the drone slightly, bringing Zora back into the frame. They had wrist devices too, though theirs’ looked like ruggedized wrist watches. The interface was completely different from what Hunk was used to seeing.

Pidge paused the video, “I wonder if I can grab a signal from one of those.” She zoomed in to the video on his device that showed exactly what they were seeing. “The protocol should be on this drive.”

“Yeah, but what would the range be on those?” Hunk asked. They didn’t know a lot about Kestellians. Only that they hadn’t gotten along well with Alteans… or really anyone for that matter. What they’d seen of their tech and culture managed to be simultaneously familiar and foreign.

“Assuming they’re like ours?” Lance said glumly, “Probably really good until they came to this planet.”

Pidge started skimming the video again. In quick succession, the scenes advanced. Kai and Xande helped Maro get comfortable on the benches. Zora left a bloody handprint on the bulkhead before sliding down the wall.

Xande crouched by Zora’s side. Left, returned to wind her knuckles in gauze and taping them.

Zora eventually worked herself into a panic; crying, hugging herself and rocking. Xande brought a box of tissues to her and set them by her side.

None of the cadets really rested as the footage sped on. Xande and Kai milled around anxiously, pacing, trying to distract themselves. Once she’d calmed down a little, Zora eventually busied herself with repairing equipment. She put her suit on and went into the command area. Emerged briefly for bathroom breaks and back inside. The timestamp on the video advanced on through the night.

It was hard to see if she was accomplishing anything. The occasional flicker of lights on a piece of equipment left on the floor was all that seemed to indicate anything was happening at all.

Maro got up and sat next to the equipment. Leaned against the wall, looking pale.

Zora came back in, took off her suit, and sat on the floor next to him. The timestamp continued as she fiddled with the innards at high speed and checked the display on her wrist device.

Zora looked shocked and seemed excited about something.

Pidge rewound slightly and once again allowed the footage to play normally.

“Voltron!” Zora exclaimed, flailing her hands. “I have Voltron! On the scanners!”

Hunk exchanged looks with the others. It must have been during the battle with the Galra.

Xande and Kai looked confused. Maro was instantly alert.

They watched as Maro and Zora frantically rushed to repair the systems. Anything they could find was thrown into the effort. The foil wrappers were used as solder; epoxy putty; bubblegum; jumper cables; wiring from anything non-essential.

Together, they hunched over the piece of equipment on the floor. Maro was clutching his wound, the t-shirts stained red. The lights finally came on, remained stable.

And then, Zora lifted the headset, speaking with a quavering voice:

“Hailing the Castle of Lions! This is Zora Saito aboard the Kestellian Royal Academy of Science transport ship, _Archer Zulu-Six-Two-Echo_. We were sabotaged en route to Death’s Head station. We crash landed on Planet Golf-Eight-Eight-One-Sierra of the Aclori system. We are in urgent need of assistance! There are hostiles aboard! I repeat, hostiles aboard! Over!”

Pidge’s and Hunk’s distorted voices came from the video.

Pidge stopped the video and hung her head. There were only a few minutes left on the recording anyway.

They’d abandoned ship to escape whoever, or whatever had stowed away on the ship. They didn’t know about the fuzzy, exploding balls. They’d had to choose whether to stay and risk being murdered or leave the ship and take their chances with the storm.

It was an impossible choice.

Hunk had to admit he would have taken the storm.

* * *

Lance had been right about the water being deep.

After a short tunnel, they’d found themselves in a vast, subterranean lake.

It hadn’t been apparent on Lance’s sonic map that the lake could be accessed from these tunnels. The tunnel was small and tight, blending in with the overlaid tunnels above and below. It wasn’t until they’d rotated the map a few times and zoomed in that they could see it was, in fact, the same lake.

It was almost like the ice planet with the mermaids, except warmer and with a lot more yuck. All they could see was the cones of their lights, shreds of roots, the skeletons of leaves, and a lot of sediment.

The map also showed a triangular shape on the far side of this underground lake; with what could be an air pocket at the top. The way through had been sealed by a cave in, but the theory was that it would be an ideal place for a Levlian to hide.

Coran seemed to think they could move extremely fast underwater. Faster than their jetpacks, that was for sure. Faster than the mermaids on the ice planet if their math was right. Under normal conditions, towing their teammates through this stretch would have been an easy task. However, with Maro injured, it was difficult to tell how far and how fast they would have traveled. Could he have gone as far as a healthy, uninjured Levlian?

“Aggressively sociable, lively, and curious apex predators,” had been Coran’s summary describing the Levlians’ cultural attitude.

They had appreciated tactile art and music; their floating cities had been awash with color. They preferred to keep their hands busy, making things, tinkering, exploring. They were often curious to a fault, often forgetting caution in the face of something new and exciting. However, they could also be stubborn to a fault, irreverent, and quarrelsome.

Apparently, the Alteans had found them charming.

There was nothing sacred to them, either. They questioned _everything_. Following blindly wasn’t their way. Trying to force them to do so never ended well.

And so the Galra Empire had made sure it hadn’t ended well… for the Levlians.

The triangle was just ahead. Slowly, the dark form emerged from the orange gloom.

Hunk’s breath caught in his throat as he realized what he was seeing.

The wings were gone, the bow was crushed, and it was half buried in rubble; but, it was still instantly recognizable as a Galran cruiser.

“No. Way.” Hunk breathed.

“It wasn’t a cave in that sealed this cavern…” Pidge said faintly.

The significant section of the wreak was above water and seemed to be above the rubble.

“Let’s go check it out,” Keith stated.

“Wait, wait, wait…” Hunk exclaimed, “And this is a _good idea_?”

“Even if it is a Galra ship,” Pidge started to say.

“Which it is.” Hunk interrupted. There was no “if” – that’s precisely what it was. They’d seen a lot of Galra over their time who were too tough or too stubborn to die easily.

“One of the cadets could still be hiding inside,” Pidge declared.

“Besides,” Lance added. “From all the sediment on the hull, it’s been down here a while.”

Hunk sighed but had to agree. There were no life signs; not that that meant anything on this planet.

It took a while to find their way inside. It wound up being a small hole above the water line that put them onto the bridge.

A crumpled space suit in color blocked blue, white, and gray was the first thing to meet their lights. Keith reached it first and held it up to show them the embroidered name, “M. Jarvinen.”

Hunk spun around, sweeping his light around the bridge. It was empty, aside from themselves. And not only that, it had been stripped of all computers, ship controls, data ports – all the technology – even the doors and the Galran palm scanner were missing.

Even compartments that, at least in theory, should have held Galran emergency supplies had been emptied.

“What the heck happened here?” Lance asked in confusion, looking up from a set of holes that should have held the commander’s chair and controls.

“There’s no sentries or drones either,” Keith added. “Not even debris left over from the crash.”

“Let’s check the pods,” Pidge suggested cheerlessly. “Maybe Maro went down to find a med kit.”

The way down was as dark and empty as the bridge. Floor panels were missing, the technology, cables, and even the innards of the lighted Galran symbols had been scavenged. The stairwells were littered with unusable refuse and debris.

The escape pods were at the level where the flooding started. The walls were charred and blackened. All the escape pods were there…

And that was as far as Hunk got before it dawned on him what he was seeing. He froze, not even able to think.

The shallow water was filled with skeletons. A lot of them.

Quite a few had been burnt.

Hunk spun and darted back into the stairwell as his stomach violently rebelled. He barely got his helmet off in time.

“Does… it look like the Galra were trying to abandon ship _with_ the prisoners to anyone else?” Lance asked over the coms as Hunk gagged again at the smell.

“I – I think so,” Keith answered softly. “This one died with a prisoner in their arms. Like…”

“Like they were shielding them…” Pidge finished quietly.

Hunk got his helmet back on and sucked in greedy breaths of fresh air. He reentered the escape pod bay as Keith was checking one of the Galra skeletons.

“Whoa… wait… what are you doing?” Hunk said, his voice hitching as his stomach roiled ominously.

“Checking to see if any of them are Blades,” Keith answered. He moved on to a skeleton in a commander’s uniform. (Oh god, please let that not be a little kid the commander’s skeleton was curled around!)

“It would explain why they chose to do this,” Pidge explained patiently. “Most Galra ships wouldn’t have prioritized the prisoners like this.”

She had a point, but he couldn’t stomach looking at all those bodies anymore. Sure, there wasn’t anything icky or gross anymore, but it was the knowledge that so many people had died down here and left to rot and no one would ever know and there was the smell not unlike a barbeque except it was people who had been cooked and… Hunk took a deep breath.

“Guys,” Hunk had wanted to say it cooly but he belched, and the taste of his stomach rose into his mouth. “If it were me down here – alone – I would’ve booked it out of here.”

“Okay, so…” Lance said, trying hard himself not to sound freaked out. “Maro was the engineer, right? Hunk, where would you hide?”

“Can we continue this conversation in the stairwell?” Hunk asked hoarsely as his stomach threatened to rebel again.

“If it were me, I’d try to hide where I was used to working,” Hunk said, leading the way back upstairs. “But with half the ship scavenged, I don’t think the usual hiding places would work.”

“So, I’d probably hide where the security was the strongest, then,” Keith said thoughtfully.

“Right,” Hunk agreed. “That would be the bridge or the commander’s quarters.”

His legs were burning by the time they got to that level of the ship. At least the looters hadn’t gotten that far yet. There was still a door.

Hunk pulled open the door.

Sound shattered the quiet of the wreak. It screeched, screamed, and warbled.

Even in his helmet, his head exploded in pain. It was all he could do to stand upright.

He didn’t even hear Lance shoot. Through watering eyes, he just saw the shot. How Lance managed to hit whatever, he didn’t know.

It took them several moments to recover.

“What was that?” Pidge asked, panting.

“Sonic grenade,” Lance gasped. “I think.”

Hunk could painfully feel his pulse in his temples and all the way up his scalp. His ears burned. He felt profoundly nauseated.

Keith recovered first, picked something off the floor. An ultra-thin, transparent tripwire attached to a Galran device with black tape. It looked like it had been set up to trip when the door opened.

If he weren’t hurting so badly, Hunk would have appreciated the ingenuity.

They proceeded more cautiously. Someone had set up traps all through the corridor. Mostly non-lethal leftovers the scavengers didn’t take. The scanners built into their suits picked up all the traps.

Keith took the lead, carefully cutting the tripwires as he went. At one point, he cut the tripwire and then startled when he saw what it was connected to. “Oh, that one would have been bad,” he breathed in relief. Hunk’s scanners showed it was explosives set to detonate if the tripwire pulled the pin.

Hunk didn’t know Galra ordinance well enough to compare, but it was a frighteningly large bundle.

One more sonic grenade to disarm and they were at the commander’s quarters.

Their scanners picked up a living person inside, one whose vitals matched Levlian physiology. There was an active drone inside too.

Hunk banged on the door, “Hey, Maro! Open up! We’re the paladins of Voltron! We’re here to help!”

There was no answer.

“Is he asleep or something?” Lance muttered.

Pidge looked up from her wrist device, crouched, and peered into the open panel, “I don’t think he could if he wanted to. I think the mechanism’s seized.”

Now that she said it, it looked like someone had tried to force the door open. There were pry bar marks along the jam.

She drew her bayard and sliced across below the access panel. She rammed it with her shoulder until it gave way.

The gears in the lock were visibly out of alignment. Pidge sliced again, and the locking mechanism fell away.

“Okay, Keith… I need you to cut here,” Pidge showed a scan of the door with two spots highlighted.

A few quick slices and Hunk could hear the mechanism hit the bottom of the track. It took all four of them to force the door open.

The commander’s quarters were mostly intact, all things considered. The force of the crash had wrenched open compartments and strewn personal possessions across the deck.

At the far end of the quarters, a drone hovered over the bed where Maro was sleeping. Hunk hadn’t seen that model before. It was a triangle, like most Galra drones, but it was bigger. Hunk felt his blood turn cold at the sight of several long, articulated, armored cables snaking ominously under the covers.

Pidge immediately started hacking into the drone’s systems.

“Hey, Maro,” Keith said softly as he drew back the covers. Those cables were actually going into the sleeping cadet’s arms. Keith knelt beside the bed and gently shook Maro, “Mar, wake up.”

Maro sighed in his sleep but didn’t awaken. Keith shook him again and glanced back at them in concern.

The drone suddenly showed a medical chart in Galra gibberish, showing Maro’s heartbeat, respiration, blood pressure, and more. Granted, Hunk wasn’t a doctor, but nothing really leaped out to him. Maro had a mild fever and, of course, the wound, but he was stable.

“It’s a medical drone,” Pidge announced. “But here’s the weird thing… it’s explicitly set up for Levlians. All species-specific – even cloned Levlian blood…”

“I hear a ‘but’ in there,” Hunk didn’t like the way she said that.

“ _But_ , it’s also programmed to sedate any Levlian it treats.” Pidge continued, “It saved his life, but he’s not waking up anytime soon.”


End file.
